Jean Delannoy lived to be a hundred years old and directed some 40 feature films in a career spanning over six decades. He was a contemporary of classical French cinema, of the directors of the New Wave and those who followed them, and even of TV series and dramatic productions. He was one of the favorite targets of criticism and irony of the theoreticians and journalists turned into film directors of the French New Wave. However, he was always successful with the public, or at least with a part of the public. He was the first winner of the Palme d’Or, at the first edition (1946) of the Cannes Film Festival. Last but not least, his two films about Commissaire Maigret are considered the most successful screen adaptations of Georges Simenon’s novels that have the Parisian policeman with a pipe as their hero.
‘Maigret tend un piège‘ (1957) is the first of these films. I remember well that I saw the second one, dated 1959, but I didn’t remember this one at all. It might have been too decadent for the communist censorship, or maybe I was too young and my parents postponed my watching it (for more than 60 years eventually). I don’t think I could have forgotten it. Maigret investigates a series of murders of women who appear to be the victims of a serial killer. The place where the murders take place is the Parisian Marais district and even Rue des Rosiers, which would become famous 25 years later under tragic circumstances. The weapon of one of the murders is stolen from a butcher’s shop near the scene of the crime, and the investigation focuses on the butcher (quickly proven innocent) and those who are connected in one way or another to the building where the butcher’s shop is located. Among them is the Maurin family – he is a designer and a painter, she is a young and unfaithful wife, and the mother is the owner of the building. To solve the cases, Maigret must first untangle the complicated threads of the relationships between the members of this family.
Jean Gabin is the perfect actor to play the role of Maigret. After seeing the other film in the diptych, I read perhaps dozens of novels with him as the hero and I could never imagine him in any other way than how Gabin represented him. He is also helped by the excellent dialogues, among those who sign the adaptation after Georges Simenon‘s novel being Michel Audiard. I liked the fact that Mrs. Maigret, a secondary character in many of Simenon‘s novels, also has a role in the action. The young Mrs. Maurin is played by Annie Girardot. The presence on screen of Gabin and Girardot gives rise to several moments of maximum psychological tension. The entire cast is excellent, and Lino Ventura fans have the opportunity to see him in a supporting role, a few years and a few films before his fame. Watched today, 67 years after its production, ‘Maigret tend un piège‘ did not seem outdated to me at all. On the contrary. Jean Delannoy did not hesitate to go out to film on the streets of Paris, especially at night, with a camera in his hand, as his young critics and rivals did. The ending of the film is excellent, with a confrontation between characters and a psychological tension in the style of Hitchcock, the director adored by Truffaut and not only him. The fascination with female characters and their secrets also reminded me of Hitchcock’s movies. Making a quality detective film that pleases the audience is not a sin. This is what his younger critics would learn after a decade of revolts and experiments. Posterity recovered and rehabilitated Jean Delannoy.