Quai des Orfevres - Criterion Collection

Quai des Orfevres - Criterion Collection
by Henri-Georges Clouzot

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DVD Cover Information

Actor: Bernard Blier, Louis Jouvet, Pierre Larquey, Simone Renant, Suzy Delair
Director: Henri-Georges Clouzot
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Subtitled); French (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Format: Black & White, DVD-Video, NTSC, Subtitled
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 106 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2003-05-27
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Criterion

Movie Reviews of Quai des Orfevres - Criterion Collection

Movie Review: The low life
Summary: 5 Stars

Henri-Georges Clouzot's 1948 police procedural, also exhibited under the title JENNY LAMOUR, is a beautifully constructed look into the lives of the lower depths of Paris just after the war, where millionaires go slumming and rub elbows with pornographers, petty thieves, and vaudeville performers. As with his later LES DIABOLIQUES, Clouzot focuses mainly on an odd little m?nage ? troi: Jenny Lamour (the astonishingly carnal Suzy Delair), a music-hall songstress and femme fatale; her nebbishy husband and accompanist Maurice Martineau (Bernard Blier, looking like Bob Newhart); and Dora Monier (Simone Renant), their photographer friend who dabbles in pornography and who yearns for Jenny (but sleeps with Maurice). All three of them one night secretly visit the crime scene of a murder of the loathsome elderly capitalist (Charles Dullin) who makes advances towards Jenny: the film shows you how they attempt to cover their tracks, and then how a seedy gumshoe on the Paris police force (Louis Jouvet) undoes all their work. You wind up rooting for the trio. despite their bad behaviors towards one another, because the murdered man was so despicable, yet you also understand the detective's impassioned defense of police work, even though the Paris police here abuse their suspects' civil rights and employ all kinds of questionable tactics.

A film like this depends wholly on its director and its actors, and in this regard it could not be better. Clouzot has often been compared to Hitchcock for his dark view of human relations, his interest in generating extreme suspense, and his poor treatment of his actors (though like Hitchcock he often prompted amazing performances from them). Although all four principals are terrific, it's as hard to keep your eyes off of Clouzot's Jenny, Suzy Delair, as it is for everyone around her character in the film. The French dialogue is admirably tough and coarse, which enhances the naturalistic sense of probing the Parisian lower depths.

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Summary of Quai des Orfevres - Criterion Collection

Blacklisted for his daring "anti-French" masterpiece, Le Corbeau, Henri-Georges Clouzot returned to cinema four years later with the 1947 crime fiction adaptation, Quai des Orfevres. Set within the vibrant dancehalls and historic crime corridors of 1940s Paris, ambitious performer Jenny Lamour (Suzy Delair), her covetous piano-playing husband Maurice Martineau (Bertrand Blier), and their devoted confidante Dora Monier (Simone Renant) attempt to cover one another's tracks when a sexually ogreish high-society acquaintance is murdered. Enter Inspector Antoine (Louis Jouvet), whose seasoned instincts lead him down a circuitous path in this classic whodunit murder mystery.

Though dressed in the guise of a murder mystery, Quai des Orf?vres is a rich, engrossing character study in which murder plays a secondary role. Six years before the triumph of The Wages of Fear, director Henri-Georges Clouzot couldn't find a copy of his source novel (L?gitime Defense, by Stanislas-Andr? Steeman), so he crafted this stylish police procedural from spotty memory, infuriating the author while freeing himself to explore the depths of his all-too-human characters. Using atmospheric Parisian locations and shadowy compositions that rival anything in American film noir, Clouzot gives plausible alibis to the prime suspects--a dancehall chanteuse, her suspicious husband, and a fashionable lesbian photographer--while a seasoned detective (played to perfection by Louis Jouvet) efficiently sorts through the clues. Anyone expecting thrills will be disappointed: Clouzot's fascination with human behavior prevails, and this subtle mix of motives and secrets is delicately balanced with underworld cynicism and a compassionate understanding of the human heart. --Jeff Shannon

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