Un témoin dans la ville (1959)
Directed by Edouard Molinaro

Film 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.

Film Synopsis

In the course of a violent argument, businessman Pierre Verdier pushes his mistress Jeanne out of a moving train.  Tried for murder, he is subsequently acquitted through lack of evidence.   Ancelin, the dead woman's husband, has no doubts over Verdier's guilt and has had plenty of time to prepare the businessman's execution by the time he returns home.  Taking care to make his victim's death look like suicide, Ancelin leaves his house and is surprised to find a taxi waiting outside - one that was presumably ordered by Verdier just before he was killed.

Seeing immediately that the taxi driver, Lambert, could be a dangerous witness, Ancelin starts to trail him around town.  He has an opportunity to kill him by pushing him off a platform in the Metro, but he cannot bring himself to follow through.  When he sees a woman hand the taxi driver a newspaper Ancelin realises that he can hesitate no longer.  He boards Lambert's taxi and, after a brief exchange of words, shoots him dead.  The conversation and the gunshot are heard by the victim's colleagues over the two-way radio.  It is now their time to go on the offensive.  Before he knows it, Ancelin is a hunted man...