Highway Pick-Up

A job goes wrong for two safe-crackers and a security guard is murdered. The thief who committed the murder escapes punishment and his partner is convicted for the crime he was responsible for. After being sentenced to twenty years, he uses his skills to escape and winds up befriending a man who owns a cafe/filling station in the mountains. When his young wife discovers the safe-cracker's past, she blackmails him into opening her husband's safe. Needless to say, the husband catches them in the act and is accidentally killed in the process. Not long after the ex-partner hooks up with his colleague on the run and the plot thickens further.

This French crime-drama is an example of a very dark neo-noir. Every character we encounter in the cast is bad on at least some level. It's a world populated with people of different shades of dark grey, with greed and lust the main emotions of motivation. At the centre of the drama is an anti-hero who is caught in a web spun by a femme fatale, who is out to get all she can. But these are no one dimensional characters, for example the gold digging young wife acts very selfishly, yet you do sort of sympathise with her powerless position in life as a possession of her old and unattractive husband; while at the same time we understand the reasons why everyone does what they do, they all seem to be caught in traps of some kind or other. Acting is very good with Robert Hossein leading the piece and Jean Sorel his partner in crime, but perhaps it is Catherine Rouvel who is most memorable as the femme fatale whose actions propel the drama into tragedy.

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 Siodmak's CRISS CROSS and Stanley Kubrick's THE KILLING, is a memorable one.

Daniel Boisett (Robert Hossein) and his friend Paul Genest (Jean Sorel) are disturbed by the home owner during an attempted safe-cracking. In the ensuing mêlée, Paul accidentally kills the home owner and both men flee the scene in panic. Paul manages to escape but Daniel is shot and wounded by police and is promptly sentenced to a lengthy stint in prison.

Fourteen months later Daniel manages to escape and while out walking on the road he meets up with Thomas (Georges Wilson), who after the pair quickly become friends, offers him a job at the Mountain Relay Station he owns. Daniel adopts a new alias and accepts the offer, but once there he meets Thomas' sexy young gold digging wife, Maria (Catherine Rouvel), and nothing will ever be the same from here on in...

Directed by Julien Duvivier (Pépé le Moko), who also co-adapts the screenplay with René Barjavel from the novel "Come Easy--Go Easy" written by James Hadley Chase, Chair de poule (AKA: Highway Pick-Up) is French film noir excellence. A picture that carries all the hallmarks of the 40s and 50s classic film noir cycle, and proudly wears this fact as a badge of honour.

Comparisons have inevitably been drawn to The Postman Always Rings Twice (Tay Garnett 1946), which in itself is no bad thing at all, but this is still very much its own animal. Duvivier never lets the story sit still as a standard formulaic plot, there's always some new twisty addition to the story coming around the corner, unstable characters entering the fray to keep the bleak noirish stew bubbling away.

A fascinating feature of the picture is that our main protagonist, Daniel Boisett, is actually a good guy. Sure he was a safe-cracker, but he's not murderous, and as it turns out fate conspires against him to make him seem like a multiple killer, when he clearly is not. He took the fall for his mate, escapes jail and tries desperately to start afresh with honesty and virtue. But once Maria comes into his life fate has already dealt its deadly trump card.

Women always pay with the same currency...

Maria is an absolute sex bomb, a sizzling siren of sexuality, but as Daniel tells her, it's a pity she's so rotten, because she is, and very much so. Yes, there's a back story to her that stings her emotional fortitude, but she's a bad egg for sure. Things quickly spiral out of control, where even though Daniel knows that Maria is a femme fatale of the highest order, he's caught in a trap, a trap from which himself and the other male players in the piece can't possibly escape.

Visually it's an intriguing picture as most of it is set in daylight up at a picturesque location. It begins in classic noir territory in the pouring rain as the men begin the safe-cracking job, and then during the escape, Duvivier and his cinematographer Léonce-Henri Burel produce a magnificent shot of a cop's giant silhouette felling the fleeing Daniel. After this we are predominantly in high light terms, but never once does the sense of claustrophobia dissipate, the atmosphere is consistently hot and sticky.

Impressively performed and directed, Chair de poule is cynical, bleak and like a coiled spring waiting to explode. From that bleak rainy beginning to the explosively ironic finale, this is, basically, an essential viewing for film noir aficionados. 9/10

A plot thickens in the middle of nowhere in the south of France in the 60s.

The atmosphere is thrilling, with humorous scenes, moments of sexual tension and gangster action.

The soundtrack is astonishing, creating a tension on the edge of your skin through exaggerated sound effects or underlining surreal situations with crazy music.

The actors are just perfect.

A Duvivier masterpiece worth rediscovering, notice his sense of drama staging the American night, framing these lost places: a garage-restaurant night and day, chases on a mountainside... In short, a zigzag story full of twists and turns!

I re read the Chase's novel ten days ago, so I will be able to compare. I rememeber that, back in 1978, I already read the book whilst watching the film, then aired on a French channel. I read in real time, in front of the TV set and the film, scene after scene. I got great and strange feeling to match the book and the movie...I never tried the same experience again. Anyway I did not do it during the whole ninety nine minutes. That said, this is my second or third viewing and an still satisfied, very close to the book atmosphere. Robert Hossein was hired for another Chase's novel adaptation: MEFIEZ VOUS FILLETTES. Bleak, downbeat, as in many Chase's novels. My favorite's Julien Duvivier's film.