Magnet of Doom (1963) L'aîné des Ferchaux (original title)

Director:

Jean-Pierre Melville

Writers:

Jean-Pierre Melville (dialogue)
Jean-Pierre Melville (screenplay)
(more)

Release Date:

25 September 1963 (Italy)

Genre:

Adventure | Crime | Drama

Plot Keywords:

On The Lam | Female Nudity | Secretary | Older Man Younger Man Relationship | Very Little Dialogue

Cast

Jean-Paul Belmondo	...	Michel Maudet
Charles Vanel	...	Dieudonné Ferchaux
Michèle Mercier	...	Lou
Malvina Silberberg	...	Lina
Stefania Sandrelli	...	Angie, Hitch-Hiker
Barbara Sommers	...	Lou's friend
E.F. Medard	...	Suska
Todd Martin	...	Jeff
André Certes	...	Émile Ferchaux
Andrex	...	M. Andrei
Jerry Mengo	...	Banker
Delia Kent	...	Prostitute
Ginger Hall
Maurice Auzel
Andrès	...	Le maître d'hotel
Simone Darot
Pierre Leproux	...	Un administrateur
Jacques-François Zeller	...	Un adminstrateur (as Zeller)
Dominique Zardi	...	Le speaker boxe
Eddie Somers
Hugues Wanner
Paul Sorèze		(as Paul Sorrèze)
Charles Bayard

Directed by
Jean-Pierre Melville

Writing credits (in alphabetical order)
Jean-Pierre Melville		dialogue
Jean-Pierre Melville		screenplay
Georges Simenon		novel

Produced by
Charles Lumbroso	....	producer

Original Music by
Georges Delerue

Cinematography by
Henri Decaë

Film Editing by
Monique Bonnot
Claude Durand

Production Design by
Daniel Guéret

Production Management
Jean Darvey	....	production manager
Paule Pastier	....	unit manager

Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Yves Boisset	....	assistant director
Georges Pellegrin	....	assistant director

Art Department
Louis Charpeaux	....	property master
Jean-Jacques Fabre	....	assistant decorator
Georges Fontenelle	....	set dresser
Louis Seuret	....	set dresser

Sound Department
Julien Coutelier	....	sound engineer
Jean Gaudelet	....	sound
Victor Revelli	....	sound

Camera and Electrical Department
Alain Derobe	....	assistant camera
François Lauliac	....	assistant camera
Michael Shrayer	....	camera operator
Raymond Voinquel	....	still photographer

Editorial Department
Anne Baronnet	....	assistant editor
Nicole Taroni	....	assistant editor

Music Department
Albert Raisner	....	musician: harmonica

Other crew
Antoinette Delarue	....	production secretary
Élisabeth Rappeneau	....	script supervisor

Production Companies

• Spectacles Lumbroso
• Ultra Film
• Sicilia Cinematografica

Distributors

• Süddeutsche Zeitung (2006) (Germany) (DVD)

Also Known As:

"L'aîné des Ferchaux" - France (original title)
"An Honorable Young Man" - USA (TV title)
"The Eldest of the Ferchaux" - USA (literal English title)

Runtime:

102 min

Country:

France | Italy

Language:

French | English

Color:

Color (Eastmancolor)

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Finland:S

Company:

Spectacles Lumbroso

Movie Connections:

Remade as L'aîné des Ferchaux (2001) (TV)

Southern Discomfort - the great French director takes on the road movie with mixed results

I must confess I was terribly excited at the prospect of Jean-Pierre Melville tackling the road movie. If a director was ever suitable for taking on his back the existential baggage usually associated with that particular sub-genre, that's old Jean-Pierre. But in the same time, nine out of ten times there's a reason why certain films of a director's ouevre receive all the plaudits while others tend to languish in obscurity. Simply put, Magnet of Doom is not among Melville's finest - probably not his worst either. It's just too awkward and clumsy to ever be truly successful from an artistic or technical standpoint and even though fans of the director will take pleasure in witnessing the early nurturing of those same ideas, themes and moods that would later transform into what became his signature style, Magnet of Doom lacks the singularity of purpose and stylistic confidence of something like Le Samourai.

Melville weaves the plots of two characters, an amateur boxer scraping to get by after his boxing career goes down the drain and the stalwart, rich businessman on the run from the law (presumably for someone's murder) who hires the first as his secretary and travel companion, into a road movie that takes us all the way from the petit bourgouisie cafes of France to Manhattan to the Deep South and bayous of New Orleans. If you can forgive the wooden delivery and stilted dialogue American non-actors are saddled with, the choppy editing, the occasionally clumsy and haphazard camera-work, there's quite a few things to appreciate. Melville's guerilla tactics as he samples New Orleans nightlife with a camera shooting from the open car of a moving vehicle, the documentary style of his footage of empty highway stretches, slick diners, smoky bars and neon motel signs, small parts of a puzzle that in clicking together form a different kind of Americana. One seen through the eyes of a European not necessarily fascinated with what he sees. If the boxer's fixation on Frank Sinatra, the son of Italian immigrants much like himself, symbolizes the mythic quality of the New World, a motley assortment of thieving hitchhikers, soldiers spouting racial slurs and opportunist, murderous bar owners reveals the seemy underbelly of the American Dream.

Behind the slow-burn atmosphere however, behind the minimalism of the plot, the sparse dialogue, the intimacy of the monologues, all typically Melvillesque ideas and themes that would later resurface in a more refined, surefooted form, there's not much of a story to speak of. Not only is the plot stretched pretty thin, not only does it suffer from one too many improbabilities (not plot holes necessarily but little distractions that accumulate in the course of time) but it's handled in a somewhat awkward manner. The gradual shift of power in the duo's relationship, as one learns to experience freedom and the other comes to term with solitude, is not enough to carry the dramatic weight of the plot and beyond that there's not much of anything. And if Belmondo's character redeems himself in the finale for being a conniving, self-serving scoundrel for most of the film, he has the show stole from right under his nose by by the great Charles Vanel (Les Diaboliques, Wages of Fear, To Catch a Thief) who gives another terrific performance.