Le Chien fou (1966)
Directed by Eddy Matalon

Film Review

Eddy Matalon is probably best known for a series of music videos he made with Brigitte Bardot at the height of her fame in the mid-1960s.  He is also known as a director of genre films, most notably the crime dramas Blackout (1978) and Sweet Killing (1993).  It was when the French New Wave was in full throttle that Matalon made his directing debut, with Le Chien fou, a film which looks all too obviously like someone throwing himself and everything he owns onto this particular passing bandwagon.  Stylishly modern though the film undoubtedly is, it is unapologetically derivative, with a plot that performs a shameless smash and grab raid on just about every decent American film noir thriller of the 1950s, particularly those of the ultra-hard-boiled variety.

Matalon clearly had the time of his life turning out the ultimate noir pastiche and giving it a massively over-egged Nouvelle Vague gloss, complete with an outrageously over-the-top jazz soundtrack that soon becomes unbearable.  It would be so easy to write Le Chien fou off as a mere exercise in wild self-indulgence but there are still plenty of good reasons for watching the film.  For one thing, Matalon makes very good use of his charismatic lead actors -  Claude Brasseur and Dany Carrel - even if both are criminally ill-served by a script that looks as if it was spit out by a machine afflicted with an imagination bypass.  For another, the director's evident enthusiasm more than makes up for his lack of originality and talent, and in some parts of the film he brings a genuine flair to what is otherwise a tediously run-of-the-mill gangster romp.

There is a painfully glaring mismatch between the film's visual artistry and its poorly paced second-hand narrative.  The latter weighs down the entire production with predictable plot twists and pointless longueurs that are excruciating to sit through.  What keeps us watching are the seductively involving noir visuals, with night-time Paris literally transformed into a suffocatingly dark labyrinth of crime from which there is no escape.  There are some striking similarities with Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Samouraï (1967), one obvious point of connection being the police dragnet and subsequent chase through the Paris Metro.  It is also worth mentioning that midway through the film there is an admirably well-choreographed car chase sequence that prefigures Peter Yates' Bullitt (1968) - some years before such a thing became an essential ingredient of any French or American crime thriller.  The tense closing sequences owe much to the classic denouement of Carol Reed's The Third Man (1949), and in this part of the film Matalon does finally show his worth as a thriller director.
     
The sweet romantic interlude in which Brasseur and Carrel become acquainted provides a welcome break from the relentlessly doom-laden nocturnal nightmare in which Brasseur is enmeshed for the bulk of the film.  This serves to fully humanise Brasseur, making the latter part of the film far more poignant and suspenseful than it might have been.  Olivier Despax, a popular singer of the time, provides the title song that allows Brasseur and Carrel's seemingly ill-matched characters to connect in a way that feels jarringly natural given the highly synthetic nature of everything else the film throws up.  Le Chien fou is unlikely to be mistaken for a classic of its genre, but it shows just how impactful the aesthetic of the French New Wave was, at a time when the craze for posturing modernity was at its most frenzied.

Film Synopsis

Late one night, a gang of Parisian thieves succeed in breaking into a safe and laying their hands on a small fortune in diamonds.  Before they can make their escape, they are disturbed and in the sudden exchange of gunfire one of the three receives a severe bullet wound.  Marc, the most sympathetic of the thieves, insists that they take the badly bleeding man to a doctor, but his accomplice refuses.  When his stricken friend dies, Marc shoots the third member of their gang dead and absconds with the stolen jewels.  His one thought now is to offload the booty for the highest price he can get. Dissatisfied by the price offered by the first receiver he contacts, Marc looks around town for a higher offer, but meets with nothing but treachery and violence wherever he goes.

In the end, one of Marc's criminal contacts robs him of all but one of the jewels, and he is left roaming the city aware that he is a target for the trigger-happy associates of his dead partners in crime.  He has a chance encounter with an attractive young woman named Marie, and when they hit it off Marc begins to see a brighter future for himself in a far away country.  To pay for his flight from Paris, he contacts the owner of the stolen jewels and offers to return them in return for a large cash payment, the exchange to take place at a crowded station on the Paris Metro.  Marc narrowly avoids being caught in a police trap, but before he can make good his escape he is chased across the city by the police and gangsters, both with a score to settle.  The thief manages to shake off his police pursuers but he is ultimately cornered by a merciless team of hoodlums who clearly intend showing him no mercy.