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| Harry Baur and Valéry Inkijinoff in La Tête d'un Homme |
Cast: Harry Baur, Valéry Inkijinoff, Gina Manès, Alexandre Rignault, Gaston Jacquet, Henri Échourin, Louis Gauthier, Marcel Bourdel. Screenplay: Louis Delaprée, Pierre Calman, Julien Duvivier, based on a novel by Georges Simenon. Cinematography: Armand Thirard. Art direction: Georges Wakhévitch. Film editing: Marthe Poncin. Music: Jacques Belasco.
The seamy side of Paris gets a thorough exploration in Julien Duvivier's La Tête d'un Homme, an adaptation of one of Georges Simenon's gritty and intricately plotted Maigret novels. The film begins in a seedy, crowded bar, where a man down to his last sou voices the wish that someone would murder his aunt, whose fortune he will inherit. And he gets his wish, thanks to a man who overhears him. That's the setup for a story that spins out into frameups and blackmail and double crossings that take Inspector Maigret (Harry Baur) a good deal of effort and a few slyly unorthodox tricks of his own to sort out. The main pleasure of the film lies not in the detective work, but in its creation of atmosphere through moody, expressionist camerawork and skilled performances. Baur is superb as Maigret, but he meets his match in Valéry Inkijinoff as Radek, a man who has nothing to lose because he's dying, and spends his last days manipulating others to take the fall for the murder he has committed. La Tête d'un Homme is sometimes a little too slowly paced for a mystery thriller, but its slowness allows for character development not typical of the genre.
