It seems like only yesterday I was remarking on how few French movies feature newspapermen as protagonists and here is not only another one but also featuring the same actor, Paul Meurisse, who has graduated from a photographer - in La Ferme aux loups - to a reporter and as if that weren't enough he played a singleton in the former and watched co-star Francois Perier (playing the reporter) walk into the sunset with Martine Carole whereas here He has already got the girl, Odette Joyeux. Alas, it is light years short of La Ferme aux loups partly because of indecision on the part of the journeyman director who switches uneasily between comedy and high drama. Essentially a womanising pianist dies and Meurisse attempts to shift a few extra copies by stating categorically that it was murder. Turns out he was correct but how did he KNOW unless HE was the killer. Played as out and out melodrama it has the makings of a great little thriller, played for out and out laffs it has the makings of a fine comedy but played as it is, a melange, it has the makings of an unsatisfactory film.
2 Reviews
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dbdumonteil30 September 2006
This work is not really satisfying.It's pussyfooting all along the movie. The director does not seem to make up his mind: sometimes it's a comedy and the owner of Paul Meurisse's paper provides the comic relief ;and sometimes it's thriller (and I mean thriller ,cause the journalist might die on the guillotine: during his trial,some say he could be sentenced to death)And it is finally a disappointment.
A musician (who is also a womanizer) dies and the aforementioned journalist writes in his paper that it's a murder!Of course everybody buys the rag.But it is really a murder and the reporter becomes the main suspect.All his proofs backfire on himself and his wife (Odette Joyeux) desperately tries to save him.
Most interesting scene: Meurisse's depiction of the crime in the bathtub :six years later,he would be murdered that way in Clouzot's "les Diaboliques"!
A musician (who is also a womanizer) dies and the aforementioned journalist writes in his paper that it's a murder!Of course everybody buys the rag.But it is really a murder and the reporter becomes the main suspect.All his proofs backfire on himself and his wife (Odette Joyeux) desperately tries to save him.
Most interesting scene: Meurisse's depiction of the crime in the bathtub :six years later,he would be murdered that way in Clouzot's "les Diaboliques"!
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