Un témoin dans la ville
1959 Crime / Drama / Thriller   
Director: Edouard Molinaro
Starring: Lino Ventura, Sandra Milo, Franco Fabrizi, Jacques Berthier, Daniel Ceccaldi
 
Summary
Acquitted for the murder of his mistress, industrialist Verdier returns home one evening to face the dead woman’s vengeful husband, Ancelin.  Verdier’s long over-due execution is well-planned and swift, but when Ancelin leaves his house, he runs into a taxi driver ordered by Verdier.   Ancelin has no option but to pursue the taxi driver, but for some reason he finds it hard to kill him...

Credits
  • Director: Edouard Molinaro
  • Script: Edouard Molinaro, Gérard Oury, Alain Poiré, André Tabet, Georges Tabet, Thomas Narcejac and Pierre Boileau (novel)
  • Photo: Henri Decaë
  • Music: Barney Wilen
  • Cast: Lino Ventura (Ancelin), Sandra Milo (Liliane), Franco Fabrizi (Lambert), Jacques Berthier (Pierre Verdier), Daniel Ceccaldi (South American client), Robert Dalban (Raymond), Micheline Luccioni (Germaine)
  • Country: France
  • Language: French
  • Runtime: 90 min; B&W
  • Aka: Witness in the City



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Review
With two successful crime dramas under his belt, director Edouard Molinaro stays with the genre and delivers what is quite possibly his darkest and most stylish film.  Taking his inspiration from American noir thrillers and their French counterparts – notably the policiers films of Jean-Pierre Melville – Molinaro constructs a well-honed suspense thriller which, despite the threadbare plot and sparse dialogue, is extraordinarily compelling.

By the late 1950s, the policier was beginning to become a tired, formulaic genre in French cinema, although still remarkably popular.  Un témoin dans la ville is in a different league altogether, almost an art film, thanks to its beautifully evocative design and noir photography (one of cinematographer Henri Decaë’s best pieces of work), which give the film a sinister existentialist feel, as well as a striking sense of cold realism.

Daringly, the narrative is focussed almost entirely on one character - played superbly by Lino Ventura, an ex-wrestler who had a very successful career playing hard men in films such as this.  In one of his few roles as an antipathetic villain, Ventura brings an intensity to the film which makes his character’s increasingly desperate attempts to extricate himself from the mess he has got himself into utterly gripping, and with a nice touch of pathos.

© James Travers 2008



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