Suzy Delair

The Murderer Lives at Number 21

by
Suzy Delair and Pierre Fresnay

Agatha Christie, Alfred Hitchcock and (using a time machine) the Knives Out franchise jostle along chummily in The Murderer Lives at Number 21 (L’assassin habite… au 21), the 1942 feature debut by Henri-Georges Clouzot and a confident beginning by a film-maker who knows exactly what he’s about. Winking all the while at the audience, Clouzot gives us a murder right up front – a drunk in a bar who’s just won the lottery – done with a camera that slides between third-person omniscience to killer to victim, Clouzot as good as announcing himself as hugely talented before the film’s even got going, in the same way as the killer announces himself, with a … Read more

Quai des Orfèvres

by
Jenny Lamour and the inspector

“Quai des Orfèvres” means “the cops” in France in the same way that “Scotland Yard” does in the UK. So it’s no surprise that this classic from 1947 is a crime thriller. It’s a peculiarly knotty one, directed by the masterly Henri-Georges Clouzot, who also did the adaptation, from Stanislas-André Steeman’s original novel Légitime Défense. Clouzot did not have the novel in front of him as he worked, and had not read it for years, but he took Steeman’s basic idea and fleshed it out using his own characters, getting all sorts of plot details “wrong” as he worked. The result appalled Steeman, who discovered that Clouzot and writing collaborator Jean Ferry had … Read more