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Highest honors go to this stylish, cinematically refined adaptation of a George Simenon thriller. Michel Blanc becomes a person of interest for a murder investigation mainly because he’s disliked and anti-social; Sandrine Bonnaire is the neighbor that he peeps at nightly, to stir his secret passion. Director Patrice Leconte directs with almost perfect control, turning the show into an emotional workout.

Monsieur Hire

Blu-ray

Cohen Film Collection

1989 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 79 min. / Street Date October 25, 2022 / Available from / 29.95

Starring: Michel Blanc, Sandrine Bonnaire, Luc Thuillier, André Wilms, Eric Bérenger, Marielle Berthon, Philippe Dormoy, Marie Gaydu, Michel Morano, Nora Noël.

Cinematography: Denis Lenoir

Production Designer: Ivan Maussion

Costume designer: Elisabeth Tavernier

Film Editor: Joëlle Hache

Original Music: Michael Nyman

Scenario, adaptation and dialogue by Patrice Leconte, Patrick Dewolf from the book Les fiançailles de M. Hire by Georges Simenon

Produced by Philippe Carcassonne, René Cleitman

Directed by Patrice Leconte

We’re fond...

Stars: Viviane Romance, Michel Simon, Paul Bernard, Lita Recio | Written by Julien Duvivier, Charles Spaak | Directed by Julien Duvivier

The setting for this 1946 gem is a small French town, and the fast-moving plot concerns the murder of a local woman, Aurore Noblet. While the police are baffled by the killing, the locals are quick to assume the culprit: Monsieur Hire (Michel Simon), a reclusive and friendless man who’s too smart for his own good.

When the beautiful Lili (Vivian Romance) – Aka “Alice” – comes to town, she runs straight into the arms of her lover, Alfred (Paul Bernard). Alfred is, of course, the killer – and now the beneficiary of a purse containing 7,000 francs. However, Hire apparently has proof of Alfred’s guilt, so it is imperative that the scheming couple get him out of the way, and they will do so by blaming him for the murder of Noblet. Helpfully for them,...

For directing skill and sensual sophistication this psychologically intense murder tale equals or betters the most sophisticated American noirs. Julien Duvivier gives us Michel Simon as Monsieur Hire, a strange man loathed by his neighbors. Entranced by the woman he spies through his bedroom window, Hire doesn’t realize that she’s helping to frame him for murder, and then set him out like bait for a vengeful mob. The restored French classic is a beauty in every respect; the extras include a highly educational, must-see discussion of movie subtitling, by Bruce Goldstein.

Panique

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 955

1946 / B&W / 1:37 flat full frame / 98 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date December 18, 2018 / 39.95

Starring: Michel Simon, Viviane Romance, Paul Bernard, Charles Dorat, Lucas Gridoux.

Cinematography: Nicolas Hayer

Film Editor: Marthe Poncin

Special Effects: W. Percy Day

Original Music: Jean Weiner

Written by Julien Duvivier, Charles Spaak from a novel by...

The already-incredible line-up for the 2016 New York Film Festival just got even more promising. Ang Lee‘s Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk will hold its world premiere at the festival on October 14th, the NY Times confirmed today. The adaptation of Ben Fountain‘s Iraq War novel, with a script by Simon Beaufoy (Slumdog Millionaire), follows a teenage soldier who survives a battle in Iraq and then is brought home for a victory lap before returning.

Lee has shot the film at 120 frames per second in 4K and native 3D, giving it unprecedented clarity for a feature film, which also means the screening will be held in a relatively small 300-seat theater at AMC Lincoln Square, one of the few with the technology to present it that way. While it’s expected that this Lincoln Square theater will play the film when it arrives in theaters, it may be...

Marc Allégret: From André Gide lover to Simone Simon mentor (photo: Marc Allégret) (See previous post: "Simone Simon Remembered: Sex Kitten and Femme Fatale.") Simone Simon became a film star following the international critical and financial success of the 1934 romantic drama Lac aux Dames, directed by her self-appointed mentor – and alleged lover – Marc Allégret.[1] The son of an evangelical missionary, Marc Allégret (born on December 22, 1900, in Basel, Switzerland) was to have become a lawyer. At age 16, his life took a different path as a result of his romantic involvement – and elopement to London – with his mentor and later "adoptive uncle" André Gide (1947 Nobel Prize winner in Literature), more than 30 years his senior and married to Madeleine Rondeaux for more than two decades. In various forms – including a threesome with painter Théo Van Rysselberghe's daughter Elisabeth – the Allégret-Gide relationship remained steady until the late '20s and their trip to...

Translators introduction: This article by Mireille Latil Le Dantec, the first of two parts, was originally published in issue 40 of Cinématographe, September 1978. The previous issue of the magazine had included a dossier on "La qualité française" and a book of a never-shot script by Jean Grémillon (Le Printemps de la Liberté or The Spring of Freedom) had recently been published. The time was ripe for a re-evaluation of Grémillon's films and a resuscitation of his undervalued career. As this re-evaluation appears to still be happening nearly 40 years later—Grémillon's films have only recently seen DVD releases and a 35mm retrospective begins this week at Museum of the Moving Image in Queens—this article and its follow-up gives us an important view of a French perspective on Grémillon's work by a very perceptive critic doing the initial heavy-lifting in bringing the proper attention to the filmmaker's work.

Filmmaker maudit?...

Here we are, at the top of the mountain. We’ve had plenty from every war imaginable, some supportive of war efforts, some not. But the more interesting war films really focus on the people; the internal struggles those men and women have about what they are doing. Whether made in America, Germany, the United Kingdom, or anywhere else, war is not just a battle between good and evil. It’s a life and death struggle between opposing sides that may not be that different. The movies at the top of this list may be subtle or straightforward, but each of them is a clear snapshot that lets audiences see what it means to fight, so they don’t have to.

10. Paths of Glory (1957)

Directed by: Stanley Kurbick

Conflict: World War I

Before Stanley Kubrick grabbed the rights, the source material for Paths of Glory had a long history. The novel,...

What makes a brilliant script? Is it quotable lines? Is it nuanced dialogue? Or is it just the ability to move the story along and not get in the way? When looking back through the history of screenwriting, there are plenty of iconic films based on previous work; the Writer’s Guild of America voted Casablanca the greatest screenplay of all time, but it’s adapted. So, what is the most important piece of film writing ever written directly for the screen? This list will shift from American to international, conventional to unconventional. Most importantly, these are the scripts that demonstrate how “screenwriting from scratch” is done.

courtesy of amazon.com

50. Last Year at Marienbad (1961)

Written by Alain Robbe-Grillet

Empty salons. Corridors. Salons. Doors. Doors. Salons. Empty chairs, deep armchairs, thick carpets. Heavy hangings. Stairs, steps. Steps, one after the other. Glass objects, objects still intact, empty glasses. A glass that falls,...

The second in a short series celebrating the films of the Pathé-Natan company, 1926-1934. 

La petite Lise (1930) seems like a film from Mars. It's so dazzling and unique that it should be a textbook classic, and then it wouldn't be so startling. I suppose its failure to perform at the box office is all the explanation we need for why it didn't join the canon, although other commercially unsuccessful movies have managed it. It's finally emerging into the light, I think, and taking its place as a truly innovative early sound film: dialogue occupies such a distant third place in the film's scheme that calling it a talkie seems quite wrong.

One anecdote stands out: when producer Bernard Natan first saw the film Jean Grémillon had made for his company, he told the director that he'd never again be employed by Pathè-Natan, in such forceful terms that Grémillon...

When the British Film Institute was just getting started releasing DVDs, it was a surprise to come across La kermesse héroïque (a.k.a. The Heroic Surrender, a.k.a. Carnival in Flanders, 1935), a good, odd film probably not on many people's must-have lists, or at least not until it became possible for them to have it. Happily, the BFI has gone on digging up curios from the past, notably with its Flipside series of obscure British films from the 60s.

Jacques Feyder's film, based on a story by top scenarist Charles Spaak, tells of a Dutch town in 1616, on the even of its carnival celebrations, discovering itself threatened by invasion from the Spanish. The Burgomaster (André Alerme) and the town's most prominent citizens are aghast at the carnage likely to be wrought, and after they describe the rape and baby-slaying in detail, Feyder cuts to a fantasy insert depicting,...

Jean Grémillon's Gueule d'amour (Lady Killer) of 1937 is almost an archetypal French film of its period. It uses North African colonial settings, like Pepé le Moko. It features the French foreign legion, like La bandera and Le grand jeu. It celebrates male friendship over the perfidy of women, like La belle equipe. It stars Jean Gabin, like everything else.

Partly, the movie succeeds in avoiding the appearance of an identikit picture because it's so well-crafted: Grémillon was a supremely stylish and sensitive filmmaker, whose films typically not only fulfill their genre requirements but hint at broader, more mysterious concerns—in Renoir's phrase, he's adept at "leaving a door open." His collaborators on this one include Günther Rittau, who worked on Metropolis, and Charles Spaak, who worked for almost every major director and whose continuing neglect is one of the more regrettable consequences of the auteur theory. (Partial credits for Spaak: La grand illusion,...