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Saturday, December 28, 2019

PANIQUE (1946)

A masterpiece from Julien Duvivier, back in France after WWII Hollywood exile. Returning with a new technical panache gleaned from his Stateside studio work, he turned to a dark story from Georges Simenon, freely adapted with co-scripter Charles Spaak, about a barely tolerated outsider in one of those small, insular French towns stuffed to the breaking point with gossip & jealousy. Michel Simon is Monsieur Hire, a man who likes to watch. He’s stumbled over a recent murder in town, and though considered a likely suspect, he’s actually the one guy who knows the identity of the killer, but holds back this knowledge in order to pursue a relationship with the man’s sacrificing girlfriend (Viviane Romance). Just out of prison after taking the fall for ‘her man’ on a robbery, now she’s using her charms to make M. Hire take the rap on murder. The film noir aspects of this guilt roundelay staggeringly enriched by Duvivier’s use of the town as vicious chorus on every plot turn. How eager they are to collaborate!; assuming the worst with no more than circumstantial info and a strong bias against anyone who doesn’t fit in to the town’s set social fabric. With Vichy France and roundups of ‘unwanteds’ barely a year in the past, the film must have made for extremely uncomfortable viewing. It still does.

DOUBLE-BILL: A more faithful adaptation, MONSIEUR HIRE/’89, is a slow-burn creep-out and effective in its very different way. A better match-up in Henri-Georges Clouzot’s LE CORBEAU/’43.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Fascinating Alfred Hitchcock foretastes in here with a VERTIGO anticipating climax and more than nominal presentments of REAR WINDOW and STRANGERS ON A TRAIN.

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