I am writing from Pearl's once again, back for another work cycle. This morn we went to the hair salon in a driving thunderstorm. I got my hair cut, too. It rained cats and dogs until early afternoon.
Tonight I watched a French movie from the Criterion Collection called "Panique" (1946). Part crime thriller, part social commentary, it tells the story of a provincial town in France, the kind of place where everybody knows everyone, and everyone gossips. Think of "Le Corbeau" (1943), another French thriller, for comparison.
An attractive young woman (played by the delightfully named Viviane Romance) has just been released from prison for her role in a robbery. She did not participate in the crime but refused to tattle on her boyfriend. She took the rap for him, and now she is out of prison and is signing in to a halfway house, where she is expected to live a straightforward life. Little do the townspeople know that her hoodlum of a boyfriend has just arrived in town as well. A police inspector knows of his past and has an eye on him, but can only observe, as the man has yet to commit a crime. Or has he?
An elderly townswoman has been found dead near the perimeter of a carnival that has set up shop in the center of town. It's garish, cut-rate attractions will provide a symbolic background for the treachery of what is to ensue.
The town is populated by ordinary folk who would have been referred to as peasants in that less PC time. There is the butcher with a sickly wife and eight children, the local mechanic who minds his own business, the opinionated shopkeeper and the loud, pushy prostitute who looks down on everyone else. There are many others, including the police inspector who is watching the new couple in town.
One resident doesn't fit in, though. His name is Monsieur Hire. He is a bachelor who lives a solitary life and doesn't mix with the townsfolk. He is friendly enough, and is nice to the neighbor child, but the word around town is that he is a weirdo, especially because he carries his camera everywhere (the horror!) and he photographs sad things, like a homeless man frozen in the snow. Monsieur Hire is unusual, but he has his own history, his own story to tell, and he may turn out to be a lot more human than the peddlers of innuendo who surround him in the nearby apartments and streets of his neighborhood.
The boyfriend of Viviane Romance (see above) is a sociopath and in total control of her. He directs her to set up a play for the lonely Monsieur Hire, to seduce him and pretend to fall in love with him, so that the boyfriend can frame M.Hire for the murder of the elderly woman at the beginning of the picture, which the boyfriend has in fact committed.
I can reveal so much of the plot to you because the movie has more to do with the grand deception that is put forth on Monsieur Hire by the criminal couple, and less to do with "whodunit" concerning the murder. This is not a murder mystery but rather the slow study of how a man and woman with no morals or scruples, i.e sociopaths, pick a singular individual out of a crowd to take the fall for their crimes.
It is noted by the filmmakers that a sociopath has keen powers of observation, and an all-powerful instinct for self-preservation.
Monsieur Hire is a man of high intelligence himself, but he has no cunning, no guile. He trusts the young woman who comes to him, needing help to escape an abusive boyfriend. He comes to her aid and falls in love with her, but she has only been stringing him along in order to frame him for the murder committed by her boyfriend. ////
If you have seen the excellent art house hit "Monsieur Hire" from 1989, then you may already know this story. "Monsieur Hire" was one of the first movies I ever saw on dvd, back when I lived with Mom, and back then, I had no idea it was a remake of another film. It takes the story of "Panique" (which is the original movie), and sexualizes it, focuses on M.Hire's presumed voyeurism, and makes him into a very strange character that is much different from the original portrayal by Michel Simon in "Panique". Still, "Monsieur Hire" is an art house classic that I give two of the highest thumbs up.
But now that I've seen it, I think that "Panique" is even better, because it tells a realistic story of Monsieur Hire, non-stylised, and without fetish. It doesn't suggest that Hire may be a pervert as does the remake. In "Panique", he is the soul of honor compared to the rest of the town.
But because he is viewed as an oddball, he is an easy mark for the crime couple, who paint him in such a way as to be vilified by the crusading peasants. ////
"Panique" is in the tradition of great French crime films, with fantastic B&W photography, a 96 minute running time with not a scene or line of dialogue that is wasted or excessive.
"Monsieur Hire" is great. "Panique" is even better. See 'em both, in any order. Two Giant Thumbs Up twice. ////
I am super tired so I'd better get some sleep. Reading the Lisa Pease RFK book, good though not much new info thus far.
See you in the morn with much love in the meantime. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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