calling cards for murder
by
Douglas Messerli
Henri-Georges
Clouzot and Stanislas-André Steeman (screenplay), Henri-Georges Clouzot (director)
L'Assassin habite au 21 (The Murderer Lives at Number 21) / 1942
L'Assassin
habite au 21,
was Henri-Georges Clouzot’s first feature film, and the 4th movie he
wrote for the Nazi-run studio Continental Films—a company created, in part, to
replace banned American films. Fortunately, there are no obvious Nazi
propagandistic elements in this work, and some critics have observed subtle
satiric moments poking fun at the Germans.
The Mayor, the Chief of Police, and
others are naturally frustrated that there seem to be utterly no clues as the
identity of Durand, and demand the Wens solves the case within a few days or he
will be without a job.
At a would-be opera tryout, the over-the-top
Mila Malou—a woman who not only sings her songs a bit higher than they are
written and who is more than a little neurotic—is told by the opera impresario
that even if she were to sing well, he could not hire her because she has no “name.”
Determined to quickly become famous,
Mila determines to outdo her husband by being the first to discover Durand’s
whereabouts, but her actions, driving without lights, immediately land her in
jail until Wens can show up to claim her as his wife.
Meanwhile,
Wens gets a break when an ex-con, now gone straight and working as a
second-hand furniture dealer, purposely gets arrested—through a hilariously
put-down of a local policeman as he sits perched on a streetlight—so that he
can tell Wens privately that he found newly printed cards in the drawer of a
desk recently sold to him by someone living at a boarding house at 21 Avenue
Junot.
Going in search to the murderer, Wens
tells his wife he is traveling, leaving a sealed letter behind in case he doesn’t
return.
He arrives at the boarding house dressed
as a priest and there meets a cast of lunatics that might be at home in Arsenic
and Old Lace: a bird-tweeting doorman and servant, a slightly dotty landlady,
a man who makes dolls with no faces, an ex-soldier who spouts his detestation
of mankind and who sees Durand as a kind of hero, a magician who sleeps in a coffin
and keeps making things disappear, a would be lady-writer whose manuscripts are
perpetually rejected, and blind ex-boxer and his nurse who appear to be having
an affair. Each of them is strange and it seems that any one of them might be Durand.
The fun of this film, a bit like Agatha
Christie’s Ten Little Indians, lies in trying to outguess Wens and—when his
wife unexpectedly shows up as a new guest in the house—Mila in determining
which one is the murderer. Even Wens seems, once he has settled on the mean
ex-soldier, mistaken. For although the arrested man finally admits to being
Durand, police are faced with another murder with Durand’s calling card hanging
from the corpse’s neck.
They arrest the dollmaker only to be served
up with another body, and Wens goes on a chase to find the magician performing
a new act, which still does not reveal his guilt. Indeed his life is now
threatened as the 13th and perhaps final murder.
As anyone who has read my hundreds of
reviews knows, I always reveal the entire plot, so if you’ve not seen the movie
and want the joy of attempting to figure the murderer out for yourself, you
should stop here.
Yet, this is after all a comedy, and at
the last moment, the police, with Mila in the lead, rush into the warehouse
where the three Durands have trapped the detective, in order to save his life.
How they discovered his whereabouts is never quite explained. But it hardly
matters, for Mila has saved her husband. Perhaps now she can have the baby she
desires and, after performing so significantly to the boarding house audience,
give up her musical aspirations.
This charming who-done-it is a strange
offering from a Nazi film company given that it so imitates British and
American cinema.
Los
Angeles, June 8, 2019
Reprinted
from World Cinema Review (June 2019).
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