By Owen Field

THE sheer monumentality of Don Malcolm’s THE FRENCH HAD A NAME FOR IT “festival of the lost continent” has been difficult to grasp over its ten-year run. It resembles a whale obscured in a misty ocean—in this case, a mist-enshrouded history with some surprising historical suppressions.

Its singular insistence on a radically revised paradigm for the history of film noir is a bridge too far for those all too comfortable with either the “American exceptionalist” origin theories or the nebulous “darkness has no borders” mantra that steadfastly sidesteps Malcolm’s central insight.

In the first part of FRENCH ’24, which in its entirety will present 33 films covering all four decades of the rich “lost continent” of French film noir (1930s-1960s) that Malcolm has been mining since 2014, will push hard at cementing that insight—that film noir was invented in France in the early 1930s.

“I’ve been saying that for years, but it took awhile to find a way to screen all the films that proved my point,” Malcolm admits as he eyes his formidable FRENCH ’24 festival poster, which displays all 155 French noirs that he’s screened at San Francisco’s venerable Roxie Theater.

[Part One of FRENCH ’24 screens at the Roxie Theatre from October 3-7; for tickets go to roxie.com]

In his long-gestating book (also titled THE FRENCH HAD A NAME FOR IT), Malcolm lays out the dawn of film noir that occurred in France from 1931-33, during the time that German and Russian emigrés (many of whom would later wind up in Hollywood to exert a profound influence on American noir) were fashioning a new tonality for films showcasing passion and crime.

“It’s all linear in the book,” he notes, “but we couldn’t present it that way in the festival. Some of the key films connecting all that together weren’t available at the outset, and we needed to sell the idea of French noir as being sexier than its American counterpart—which it definitely is.”

Indeed, it’s only in the post—pandemic phase of the festival where Don was able to assemble and present the six seminal films from the dawn of noir in France:

1931 Les amours de minuit (FR 21, 2021)

1932 La nuit du carrefour (FR 5.5, 2019)

1932 Au nom de la loi (FR 21, 2021)

1932 Tumultes (FR 24/1, 2024)

1932 Coeur de lilas (FR 24/1, 2024)

1933 La tete d’un homme (FR 5.5, 2019)

And the piece de resistance of this key formative period, the monumental-in-its-own-right 1934 version of LES MISÉRABLES, a galvanizing “missing link” between silent film aesthetics and the sound-inflected tonalities of film noir, will anchor the October schedule of FRENCH 24, a rich opening tapestry of 14 films that fill in more fascinating topographical details that Don has brought back from his journeys on “the lost continent” of French film noir.

DON ON THE DAWN OF NOIR AND LES MISERABLES

Owen Field: As you noted, no one could connect the dots for the early history of film noir as it evolved in France…

Don Malcolm: Not in 2014. We knew about the early Maigret films, but the progression of film noir in France had been buried by poetic realism, which had become baked into France’s political history.

OF: It took several years to figure out that poetic realism was itself a kind of branching strand of film noir in its own right, yes?

DM: Yes absolutely. And we didn’t know until we saw some of the earlier Pierre Chenal films—LA RUE SANS NOM, LA MAISON DU MALTAIS—just how instrumental he was in shaping so many variants of 30s French noir.

OF: But what about LES MISÉRABLES? It is often like a silent film with sound, and it creates the first viable example of “period noir”…

DM: All of that became obvious once the bulk of the early noirs could be seen. Even though their settings were different, a thread of unity could be seen in how expressionism was being molded to something new.

OF: And Raymond Bernard picked the actor—Harry Baur—with experience in silent film and in early noir, and the whole approach just came together…

DM: Baur is the anchor. It’s amazing how fantastic he is—his range is immense, he creates a framework for tragic lead actors and his approach is appropriated by Jean Gabin in Duvivier’s LA BANDERA—from that point on, the flawed hero is the locus for noir in France, where it’s also woven into Gabin’s poetic realist classics.

A homely man like Baur could not possibly be a major star today the way he was in ‘30s France. People need to see him so that they can understand what truly great film acting is all about.

OF: No one attempted anything like LES MISERABLES again—it stands as the last and first of its kind.

DM: “Epic noir” for an epic book: Hugo and Balzac—and especially Zola—bake a kind of ur-noir tonality into their writings that fit like a glove for the dark filmmakers of the 1930s to draw from.

(SEE also Robert Ottoson’s special introduction to the 1934 version of LES MISÉRABLES here…)

OPENING NIGHT (Thursday October 3) is a return to the “sexy” early days of the festival, with France’s two most iconic stars—Jean Gabin and Brigitte Bardot—in the only film where they appeared together. EN CAS DE MALHEUR translates to “In Case of Emergency” (the English title for the Georges Simenon novel from which the film is based), but 1958 America had a more insinuating title for it: LOVE IS MY PROFESSION.

“It’s a scandalous film,” Don notes. “This middle-aged, big-money lawyer throws over his wife for what people at the time liked to euphemistically call ‘a free spirit.’ But the story has surprising depth—which is often the case with Simenon’s work away from his Maigret novels. Will domestication prevail and make the sexy adolescent into a full-functioning wife? Or is there something in her former sexually freewheeling life that will come back to haunt her—even put her in danger?”

Watching LOVE IS MY PROFESSION sixty-six years after it was released demonstrates that it’s still sexy as hell, and that it’s hardly lost its bite. Gabin and Bardot transcend the stunt casting, and the ending packs a wallop. Director Claude Autant-Lara is virtually forgotten today, but he was no stranger to controversy—you get the sense that he’s directing with relish.

THE RISE OF JEAN GABIN

Don has made sure that THE FRENCH HAD A NAME FOR IT has been rich with films featuring Jean Gabin—because, as he notes: “Even folks who claim to have seen forty or fifty of his films have somehow never seen the ones we screen!”

But seriously, folks, the fact is that Gabin is all over French noir—not just in the half-dozen “go-to” titles. And FRENCH 24 brings back plenty of chances for you to view the man who is still France’s most iconic star. (There are a total of six in the “Grand Finale,” three now and three more in Part Two, which screens after Thanksgiving.)

The first, of course, was LOVE IS MY PROFESSION, with the middle-aged Gabin. #2 and #3 for FRENCH 24 will showcase the young Gabin: first as an “apache” (the French term for a roughneck) in Anatole Litvak’s LILAC (1932), one of his first appearances. This is followed by the second of three consecutive films Gabin made with Julien Duvivier, LA BELLE EQUIPE (1936), where we see a more polished performer—he’s a stalwart dreamer who dreams big with his friends, purchasing a rundown tavern/bistro (the French term: “guingette”) in hopes of creating a new Paris sensation. As you can expect from its inclusion in a French noir festival, things don’t quite go as planned.

OF: These two films screen on October 6 as the matinee before LES MISÉRABLES…

DM: That’s right. I decided that we should have a major day of 1930s French noir so that the full historical range gets covered as we wrap things up.

OF: The large poster for FRENCH 24 is staggering in the amount of information it conveys about your efforts, and shows just how much ground has been covered. It’s bound to overwhelm people when they see it on display at the Roxie!

DM: Thanks. Of course, that was the point I wanted to convey—it’s an overwhelming, unprecedented situation, and putting the 155 films we’ve shown into chronological order puts all of that in front of you.

OF: The only thing that the chart doesn’t do is make it easy to pinpoint all the Gabin films you’ve screened…

DM: True—we actually thought about doing that, but we decided that the information was so dense already that it might confuse people. I trust that you are going to list them all in your piece! [laughter]

OF: For those who are wondering, the total number of Gabin films that have been screened in THE FRENCH HAD A NAME FOR IT  (and related series presented by Don Malcolm) is: twenty-three.

Jean Gabin’s appearances in THE FRENCH HAD A NAME FOR IT (& related series)

1932 Coeur de lilas (FR24)

1935 La bandera (FR23)

1936 La belle equipe (FR24)

1937 Gueule d’amour (JG118)

1939 Le jour se leve (FR3)

1941 Remorques (JG118)

1942 Moontide (JG118)

1946 Martin Roumagnac (JG118)

1949 Au-dela des grilles (FR22)

1952 La vérité sur Bébé Donge (FR2, FR 24)

1953 Leur dernière nuit (FR24)

1954 Touchez pas au grisbi (FR21)

1955 Port du desir (FR5)

1955 Gas-Oil (FR4)

1956 Voici le temps des assassins (FR1, FR 22)

1956 Crime et chatiment (FR4)

1956 Des gens sans importance (FR21, JG 118)

1958 En cas de malheur (FR1, FR24)

1958 Le désordre et la nuit (FR4)

1958 Maigret tend un piege (FR5.5)

1958 Les grandes familles (FR5)

1961 Le cave se rebiffe (JG118)

1971 Le chat (FR24)

OCTOBER 4/5: THE FESTIVAL INSIDE THE FESTIVAL

OF: You had mentioned that some scheduling issues had affected how you arranged the festival—particularly Part One…

DM: There were some added constraints imposed that prevented us from using the Roxie’s larger room on Saturday, but that proved to be a blessing in disguise—I was able to slot in a series of extremely obscure films of the type that our cotierie of “film club” folks have embraced.

OF: And that allowed you to put together a compact five-film festival for a director whose work had not quite gotten its due in the series thus far—André Cayatte.

DM: We had screened two of Cayatte’s films during the pre-pandemic phase of FRENCH—one of which, LES AMANTS DE VERONE, was a huge favorite. That will appear as part of the evening double bill on October 5: anyone reading this should immediately check to see if any seats remain for it. The other film, A TRAP FOR CINDERELLA, is a much edgier film from the mid-60s: it’s a favorite of mine, and it will play in Part Two.

OF: Cayatte is best known for his 1950s socially conscious films, which weren’t favored by the young turks at Cahiers du Cinema…

DM: Boy, is that a understatement! But we are only showing one of those in our tribute—we’re focusing on his early affinity for various flavors of film noir…films from the 1940s that show that he was a solid mainstream talent from the get-go, and followed a singular, fascinating evolution. He really deserves a full retrospective.

OF: The descriptions of the 40s noirs, and the titles—THUNDER OVER PARIS, THE LAST PENNY, UNDER THE CARDS—suggest something both dark and offbeat…

DM: Right, Cayatte was always just a bit different and there are aspects of these 40s films that point in the direction he would go…I’m very pleased that we can start the process of rediscovery for him.

OF: On the preceding night [Friday, October 4] you have another fascinating early noir double bill featuring two directors who were “opposite emigres”…

DM: Maurice Tourneur—the father of Jacques, who is immortal for directing OUT OF THE PAST—came back from America…while Robert Siodmak left Germany and spent seven years in France before going to Hollywood.

OF: This early film of Siodmak’s—which is called TUMULTES–really establishes the borderline psychotic criminal character in noir, doesn’t it?

DM: Absolutely—and it’s been overlooked by everyone, even so-called Siodmak experts. Charles Boyer will surprise you…and revolt you. It’s an essentially unlikable character—which clearly was way ahead of its time.

OF: But folks will love the gangster in the other film (JUSTIN DE MARSEILLE), right?

DM: The two characters make for a vibrant contrast. Justin, as played by the mostly unknown Antonin Berval, is flamboyant and charismatic—and a little reckless! Maurice Tourneur knew the American gangster films and he reshapes it into something that is totally redolent of southern France. Scoop up the last remaining seats for this one, too, folks!

CLOSING NIGHT: TAKE A MONSTRE SACRÉ TO LUNCH?

The most pivotal moment in the ongoing evolution of THE FRENCH HAD A NAME FOR IT was one that I personally witnessed in 2016 (during the third festival). For the first two years, the series had been one that primarily presented “sexy dark films that no one had seen”—and had become very popular as a result.

In FRENCH 3, though, there was a shift to an entirely new level of “lost continent” noir—films that were clearly just as intense, but at a moment even earlier than the celebrated classics of America. The galvanizing VOYAGE SANS ESPOIR (1943) could stare down DOUBLE INDEMNITY (1944) and more than hold its own.

The films of Robert Hossein revealed the catalyst for what Don would soon call “the last wave” of French film noir, obscured to us for half a century by the ascendance of the Nouvelle Vague, that took noir to new places during years 1957-1966 when it was moribund in America. The brilliant political romance and “afterlife noir” LES JEUX SONT FAITS showed that French directors could make more deeply felt films than anything ever dreamt in the philosophy of American noir.

But no film in that series was more revelatory than the one which put on display the type of actor who could never exist as the lead in Hollywood noir, in a role that plumbed the depths of darkness in ways simply unreachable anywhere but in France. Such actors were anything but matinee idols: they were often ungainly and uncomfortable to watch. But they were revered in France for tackling the toughest and most extreme roles—a fact that seemed to escape the Cahiers du Cinema folk who excoriated the previous generation of filmmakers who regularly employed such unlikely leading actors.

They were called monstres sacrés (sacred monsters)—and their excess and extremity of performance granted them some special dispensation amongst France’s film cognoscenti. One of these—arguably the greatest—was Michel Simon, a giant, bluff bear of a man who never met a transgressive role he wasn’t ready to play.

NON COUPABLE was the film’s title, translating to NOT GUILTY—a blistering irony given how Simon’s character, the drunken, disreputable, downward-sliding Dr. Ancelin, suddenly transforms himself into a serial killer in his provincial town. Ancelin’s fugue state reaches an ironic brick wall when he realizes that he’s been too successful at his new profession: no one believes him when he starts to take credit for the murders in his town!

I asked Don if he thought that this was possibly the turning point for his enterprise:

“I think FRENCH 3 was the decisive shift that propelled the festival to encompass everything about that lost continent, and then bring it into view in a kind of origami-like progression. And there’s no doubt in my mind that NON COUPABLE is a landmark film within that framework, far more compelling and extreme than Simon’s turn as Monsieur Hire in Duvivier’s PANIQUE.

NON COUPABLE is among the great noirs in what Spencer Selby called ‘the worldwide noir tradition” and after screening it in 2016, I knew that it had to be a closing night film sometime later on. This is its time! We’re fortunate to have a similarly-themed film also with Simon—A FRIEND WILL COME TONIGHT, an intriguing WWII tale where Simon and others are resistance fighters who feign madness to throw off the Nazis in the waning days of the war. That gives us a double dose of a monstre sacré in a way that I hope will raise eyebrows all through the theater on October 7.”

But would it be safe to take a monstre sacré to lunch, Don?

“That depends on your personal level of risk aversion…but it’s pretty safe to watch one at work in a movie theatre: there’s only a small chance that they will leap off the screen a la THE PURPLE ROSE OF CAIRO!”

And remember folks, this is just Part One of FRENCH ‘24’s “grand finale.” We’ll return in mid-November with just how Don will bring his 155-seat French film noir aircraft in for a landing.

Visit THE FRENCH HAD A NAME FOR IT website.

POSTER, TRAILERS (in French w/o subtitles) AND PHOTOS GALLERY

 

 

 

 

 

 

To read more about Film Noir and see rare posters EatDrinkFilms has published numerous articles. At the bottom of each selection click “older posts” for more.