Meurtre en 45 tours

Sumptuous house, great photography, beautiful Darrieux singing: MEURTRE EN 45 TOURS kicks off nicely... and it stays that way until Darrieux's caddish hubby, superbly played by the great character actor, Jean Servais, dies in an accident.

Then things begin to go down the tubes: Darrieux is asked to confirm that it is her hubby who's lying in the body bag, but she appears to look away as she approaches it, and later confirms to boytoy Auclair that she did not actually look.

From that point on, the nonsensical script simply loses all connection with logic and believability.

Uninspired direction by Etienne Périer, substandard performance from second lead Michel Auclair.

Another one in the long line of triangular thrillers made in the wake of "Diabolique" (1955), "Murder at 45 RPM" is expertly directed, but the plot is pretty transparent; after all, there isn't exactly a wealth of characters to spread your suspicions upon. Danielle Darrieux looks stunning, maturing like wine of the finest quality. **1/2 out of 4.

My review is of the English-dubbed version of this film, entitled MURDER AT 45 RPM (interestingly, Reed Hadley seems to be voicing at least one if not two characters in the English-dubbed version). As a fan of murder mysteries, I must give this thumbs up. You are provided with a small group of suspicious characters, an interesting mystery that goes way beyond "who killed whom", and the usual French technical virtuosity and spiritual malaise. Serious mystery fans will probably place this on the same shelf with PLEASE MURDER ME and THE NIGHT WALKER, and it's as clever as either of those gems. I also like the fact that the writers of the film have constructed it in such a way that you really don't know if the victim is even dead until the film's final scene...which is AFTER the "resolution" of the crime! There are nice ironic twists throughout, but in unexpected ways. Overall, a nice little genre film that the serious murder mystery fan is sure to enjoy.

Here is another underrated French film noir. With a plot inspired by French dynamic duo Boileau-Narcejac's (Les Diaboliques, Les Louves) novel "A coeur perdu", the story focuses on Eve (Danielle Darrieux), whose husband Maurice Faugères (Jean Servais) is said to have been killed in a car accident. The widow and her lover Jean (Michel Auclair), who both wished for Maurice's death just before the accident so they could live their love together, quickly fall into turmoil as Eve starts receiving vinyls with her dead husband voice saying that he will be back soon... Plot twists are numerous and the viewer gets played often during the movie, just like the widow and her lover do. Photography by Marcel Weiss is on point and really captures the state of fear the two protagonists go through. A minor but solid French noir.

This French noir is a B film similar to the American ones of the period, although France is not a country we normally associate with B pictures. It was the second feature film directed by the bilingual Belgian director, Etienne Périer. Périer is best known for two English language blockbusters which he directed in 1971: WHEN EIGHT BELLS TOLL and ZEPPELIN, both of which were hits at the time. Ten years earlier, in 1961, he directed BRIDGE TO THE SUN with Carroll Baker, set in Japan. He was thus equally at home with French language and English language films. This French film is available on DVD in a dubbed version, and no subtitled version appears to exist. The film is chiefly of interest because it stars Danielle Darrieux. The story of the film is based upon the novel A COEUR PERDU jointly written by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac, who made film history as the authors of the novel filmed by Alfred Hitchcock three years earlier as VERTIGO (1958). This film was remade in 1994 under the title MEURTRE EN MUSIQUE (MURDER BY MUSIC), by the French Canadian director Gabriel Pelletier. The story involves the unhappy marriage of Darrieux to an egotistical husband played by Jean Servais, and her affair with a young pianist. (Darrieux is a popular singer and her husband composes the songs.) The husband is jealous and plots entrapments and revenge, but then is apparently killed in a car crash. However, he then comes back to life and starts claiming in 45 rpm sound recordings that he faked his death and is watching Darrieux's ever move. Everything becomes very complex, especially as the husband had a business partner with shady motives. All of the people in the story are rather unpleasant, one has no sympathy for any of them, and the story is therefore unrewarding because who cares what happens to any of them anyway, But nevertheless, for those interested in the noir genre, I would say that this French film of 1960 is a conscious attempt by the French to imitate the postwar American noir films, and it partially succeeds in doing so. For people interested in the history of the cinema, that is reason enough to be aware of it or even to watch the film.