Chair de poule (1963)

A man plans a hold-up with a group of trusted fellows, he gets his hands on the money, and the girl - what could go wrong? Almost everything.

Director:

Julien Duvivier

Writers:

James Hadley Chase (novel), Julien Duvivier (adaptation),

Stars:

Robert Hossein, Jean Sorel, Catherine Rouvel

Cast

Complete credited cast:
Robert Hossein	...	Daniel Boisett
Jean Sorel	...	Paul Genest
Catherine Rouvel	...	Maria
Georges Wilson	...	Thomas
Lucien Raimbourg	...	Roux
Nicole Berger	...	Simone
Jacques Bertrand	...	Marc
Jean-Jacques Delbo	...	Joubert
Sophie Grimaldi	...	Starlet
Jean Lefebvre	...	Priest (as Jean Lefevre)
Maurice Nasil
Armand Mestral	...	Le curé / Corenne

Storyline

A man plans a hold-up with a group of trusted fellows, he gets his hands on the money, and the girl - what could go wrong? Almost everything.

---

Plot Keywords:

french noir | foreign language adaptation | based on novel

---

Genres:

Crime | Drama

---

Details

Country:

France Italy

Language:

French

Release Date:

13 November 1963 (France)

Also Known As:

Highway Pick-Up

Company Credits

Production Co:

Pans-Interopa, Société Nouvelle Pathé Cinéma

Technical Specs

Runtime:

107 min

Sound Mix:

Mono (Westrex Sound System)

Color:

Black and White

Did You Know?

Connections

Remade as The Dumb Die Fast, the Smart Die Slow (1991)

User Reviews

Evil in the sun

Locksmith Daniel Boisett (Robert Hossein) and his co-worker Paul Genest (Jean Sorel), friends since childhood, supplement their income with the occasional burglary until life spins wildly out of control one rainy night after Paul kills a man who catches them robbing his apartment. Paul manages to escape but Daniel's wounded by police and, taking the fall alone, is later sentenced to 20 years in prison but, enroute to the big house, he escapes and hitches a ride with the middle-aged Thomas (Georges Wilson) who offers him a job at his roadside restaurant. Daniel quickly accepts but soon finds out that Thomas' sexy young wife, Maria (Catherine Rouvel), has had her eye on the nest egg in her husband's safe for a long time and could use a man like him...

Julien Duvivier's classic French noir, based on a ripe piece of pulp fiction by James Hadley Chase ("Come Easy -Go Easy"), careens into THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE territory at this point but the story takes so many breathless twists and turns, any comparisons are ultimately unfair. All kinds of complications ensue when Maria's husband ends up dead and Paul pops up again but "no good deed goes unpunished" in this perverse universe where greed, lust, and self-preservation trump decent human emotions like love and friendship every time. Daniel's the quintessential noir anti-hero, caught in a vortex of nightmarish cause and effect, and the femme fatale's a feral sex kitten who double-crosses anyone who crosses her path. Like MGM's version of THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE, much of HIGHWAY PICKUP takes place in broad daylight, giving the film an "evil under the sun" aura and even though a stylistic shadow world, hallmark of the American Film Noir, is absent here, thematically the film's as bleak and as black as they come. The bitterly ironic ending, reminiscent of both Robert Siomak's CRISS CROSS and Stanley Kubrick's THE KILLING, is a memorable one.