O Caso da Rua Montmartre

Just had the chance to watch this movie for the first time; before unknown to me. And I was fascinated! Great acting, a somewhat unusual Lino Ventura in great counter-acting with Robert Hirsch.

The plot captivating, and out of the ordinary.

The title makes little sense, neither in French nor in German. So, what one could well argue against this movie, is that it is unpolished. At times it looks like just improvised from a skeleton of story board.

A real climax is, when the presumed culprit goes to the circus and encounters exactly the person he is looking for. That's done extremely well, because the audience is steered towards recognizing the identity of the man who had disappeared.

The setting is well done, almost ancien régime, with a close to perfect film-noir-lighting.

Another of my favourite films to have been reissued on DVD by Réné Château, who, as usual, haven't had the good (commercial) sense to include subtitles on their DVD so that deaf French viewers and all other prospective foreign viewers can appreciate the film - incredible !

This story and the film are the embodiment of Paris of the late 1950's with all its charm - so different from the ugly Paris of today ! Lino Ventura, one of the great franco-Italian actors sadly no longer with us plays the part of Pascal a "crieur" or newspaper seller on the banks of the Seine who unfortunately gets involved in a sinister plot hatched by a woman and her lover who want to get rid of the woman's husband.

The story is very well done and the quality is equal to that of some of Alfred Hitchcock's earlier films. I love the theme music by Jean Yatove, which cannot be found any where on cd to my great dismay, and this music is typical of the late 1950's. So beyond the story itself ( which is more interesting first time round when you don't know the outcome ) the film has the interest for me as a living documentary of Paris of that era - we get to see quite a number of the different streets of Paris, the banks of the Seine, and how the "popular" or "working" parisian lives, as opposed to the touristy cabaret areas !

I would seriously recommend this film more than any other to someone wishing to "taste" the atmosphere of that era in Paris, an atmosphere long lost to the annals of time ! Another good film for this kind of thing would be "Voici le Temps des Assassins" starring Jean Gabin. One funny thing, the title 125 rue Montmartre has absolutely no relevance in the film at all, and would appear to have been thought up by its director on the spur of the moment for want of something better !

The chemistry between Lino Ventura and Robert Hirsch is great to watch. A great movie.

Gilles Grangier was never looked upon as an auteur and a lot of his sixties movies are really bad.But the fifties display a more interesting choice of movies:Bertrand Tavernier, a famous FRench director and a very demanding critic, admires "le sang à la tête " , "gasoil" and "le désordre et la nuit",the latter being probably his best work.

"125 rue Montmartre" ,more a Boileau-Narcejac("Diabolique" )detective story style than a true film noir,is quite entertaining ,and ,given the stranglehold the nouvelle vague began to have on the French cinema,it's almost a breath of fresh air.Although by no means a nouvelle vague movie,by a long shot (there were detective films among the nouvelle vague movies,"ascenseur pour l'échaffaud" is a prominent example,"a bout de soufflé" is another one),it shares with the young Turks a shooting on location,in the streets of Paris,with its bistros,its newspaper sellers and even its large impressive houses.

The first part introduces the leads:Ventura is a newspaper seller, a loud-mouth who does not stop talking,particularly when he's eating;Hirsh is his contrary: a nervous man,on the verge of madness ,who seems to be in jeopardy.His wife,he says ,tries to drive him insane to latch on to his valuable properties.But are thing really what they seems? Pretty soon,Ventura realizes he's framed.There's a very good supporting cast including Jean Desailly as an astute cop,Andréa Parisy,Dora Doll,and Alfred Adam.

The climax of the movie remains the scenes in the circus where suddenly Grangier stops his narration to focus on a clown act which segues into an impressive ending,which could make any B movie director proud.

Lino Ventura is an ex-boxer who makes a living as a newsboy. People know him, they like him, he sleeps with Dora Doll occasionally. He sells his papers on the Pont D'Alma, then goes underneath to smoke a cigarette. Robert Hirsch throws himself into the Seine, and Ventura rescues him. Hirsch tells him an incoherent story about being a landowner, lured into a quick marriage with Andréa Parisy. Then the brother-in-law shows up and the two of them drive him mad. He fled to Paris, and tried to kill himself. Ventura is fed up with this after two days and takes him to his home, but refuses to go in. Ventura goes in and Mlle Parisy tells him her husband has tried to kill himself three times. There's no farm. She asks him to get her husband to come back. Ventura returns to Paris, and there Hirsch is, with proof of what he has said. Again, he takes Ventura to the house, telling him about 400,000 francs in a locked secretary desk, and where the key is. Again, Hirsch refuses to go in, so Ventura does, finds the money, only now there's a corpse in the salon, and police, whom Mlle Parisy identifies as her husband. The police arrest Ventura...

It's a well written and performed movie from director Gilles Grangier, a skilled commercial director. He keeps each sequence going long enough to begin to test the audience's patience, then moves on in an unexpected direction, thanks, no doubt, to the prize-winning policier by André Gillois it's derived from. Jean Desailly plays the canny detective well, and Ventura is excellent as a lug in this near-Hitchcockian movie.