The A posteriori le cinema series is an opportunity to celebrate the 7e art by revisiting key titles that celebrate important anniversaries.
In Paris, an influential producer has just been found dead in his luxurious residence. The victim having assaulted several young women during his lifetime, there is no shortage of suspects for Deputy Principal Inspector Antoine. There is Jenny Lamour, an ambitious music-hall singer who had consented to an appointment with the deceased the evening of his death, as well as Maurice Martineau, the husband, pianist, of the latter, a jealous man who had recently threatened the libidinous producer. Finally, there is Dora Monnier, the neighbor and friend of the couple, who watches over Jenny with a loving eye. Brilliant detective comedy that is good to revisit in this #MeToo era, Headquarters marked, 75 years ago exactly in October, the return to favor of Henri-Georges Clouzot.
You should know that at the time, the filmmaker was returning to the profession after having been banned “for life” for having financed his film The crow by a German company in full Occupation. Ironically, this other masterpiece is often perceived as a scathing metaphor for collaboration, precisely.
Be that as it may, in 1947, Clouzot, after colleagues had taken up his cause, undertook to adapt the novel Self-defense, by Stanislas-André Steeman. For the record, Clouzot had already adapted the work of the Belgian writer for his first film, The killer lives at 21in addition to writing the screenplay for Georges Lacombe’s film The last of the six.
Taking many liberties with the source, the director of future hits The wages of fear and Devilish offers a painting of entertainment and police circles as earthy as it is finely observed. Through the intermediary of the couple formed by Jenny Lamour and Maurice Martineau, the director first ventures behind the scenes of the post-war French music hall, the particularities of which he evokes with many tasty details, then, through the through the deputy principal inspector, in the corridors, offices and cells of the Paris judicial police, whose headquarters were located at the time at 36, quai des Orfèvres – hence the title.
In an essay published in 2003 by Criterion, Lucy Sante noted: “It’s not for nothing that the critics quoted Balzac when the film was released in France. Headquarters unveils then gives to see whole worlds, superimposed and abundant. »
On the narrative level, it is indeed of a density and a sublime fluidity.
Film thought in pictures
Clouzot’s technical virtuosity is evident from the first minutes, when Jenny learns a new song in a studio. The author of the suggestive ritornello sings the first verse, then Jenny takes over, and as she sings, an elliptical montage transports the action from the studio to Jenny and Maurice’s apartment, where we see Dora, then on the stage of the theater deserted during the initial rehearsals, before the sequence culminates in the triumphal reception of a delighted audience.
In a touch of “meta” humor, during the rehearsal segment, the manager of the room discusses with an employee, interrupting the singer. And Jenny to get impatient: “Well, shall we start again? “Illico, song and elliptical montage resume.
In 1947, Headquarters left the Venice Festival with the International Prize for Director, the ancestor of the Golden Lion, and we understand why. Moreover, despite the still controversial status of the director, the critical reception was, for the most part, quite dithyrambic. In Literary News, we had this phrase very appropriately: “Henri-Georges Clouzot is one of the rare filmmakers who are not content to translate words on film but who “think in images”. »
In Paris-Pressewe wrote: Headquarters is a very good detective film, a remarkable report on the worlds of the judicial police and the music hall, a love film, simple and profound. It is above all a film of actors, immense actors. »
In fact, the entire cast is sensational. Bernard Blier (father of filmmaker Bertrand Blier) moves as a pathetic and unlucky aspiring murderer, and Suzy Delair, then Clouzot’s companion, steals every scene she appears as Jenny Lamour, a custom-written role. Seemingly ill-matched, the spouses are often touching. As Jenny confides to Dora: “I want to arrive, but it’s him that I love: I shave with the others. Maurice is my flame. Oh, it doesn’t look like it’s burning, but it lights me up. »
In this regard, although the film is filled with chiseled dialogues rendered like music paper, many of Jenny’s lines or expressions were imagined beforehand, or improvised in situ, by his inimitable interpreter. The filmmaker called these projections of his lover “happiness of language”, as we learn in the documentary Signed Clouzot!.
In The metamorphoses of Henri-Georges Clouzot, Chloé Folens reported in this respect that, when the actress and singer was surprised by this bias by asking her director spouse “But the text? “, he replied:” The text, I do not care, as long as it’s true! »
This was a wise decision on the part of Clouzot, the natural banter of Suzy Delair doing wonders in the film.
Film noir, film of audacity
However, the other stars are not left out. As a cop who has seen snow, Louis Jouvet is enjoyable, his character’s cynicism vanishing each time his son appears, whom he is raising alone: ”That’s all I brought back from the colonies, with malaria “, he says. Need we specify that in 1947, the presence of a black child in a mainstream French film was not usual? For the anecdote, the deputy principal inspector Antoine and his son are the models of the equivalent characters in The French Dispatchby Wes Anderson.
In the same way, it was not customary at that time in the cinema to present characters as obviously homosexual as that of Dora, the amorous photographer brilliantly played by Simone Renant. The interactions between Dora and the inspector are in this case among the best moments of a film which, moreover, has many. Both lucid and supportive, Antoine says to Dora as he leaves: “You’re a guy like me: with women, you’ll never have a chance. »
We will admire, here, the different levels of meaning.
About this dark, comic and poignant classic, Olivier Père, a former critic who became director of Arte France Cinéma, wrote in 2017: “ Headquarters is a daring and personal film in which Clouzot stages his intimate demons. He talks about jealousy, physical desire or female homosexuality without clichés or false modesty. All the actors are amazing. Louis Jouvet, in the role of a misanthropic and despite everything endearing policeman, completes to make the film unforgettable. »
True. Here, for fun, here is, in conclusion, another line from the inspector, who retorts to Jenny this suave paradox after the latter has vomited all over the police force: “Debinez the cop, you are right, this are people best not to associate with. It’s not good people. Only, when it is you who will be murdered, you will be very happy to come and get us! »
The film Headquarters is offered in VOD under its English title, Jenny Lamouron iTunes.