Série Noir (1979)
Série Noir (Film Movement Classics)
French film critics coined the term “film noir” and can be said to have “discovered” the genre. With the eyes of cultural distance, they discerned new patterns among many American crime dramas that began in World War II and continuing afterward, including a streak of pessimism and—often—a debt to German Expressionist lighting and staging.
However, most French filmmakers fell short in the genre. Perhaps the cultural distance was too wide? Among the best French entries in the field, director Alain Corneau’s Série Noir (1979), rises from a strong foundation. It’s based on a story by one of America’s great midcentury hardboiled crime novelists, “the dime store Dostoyevsky,” Jim Thompson. The story’s hard-luck protagonist, Franck, works in door-to-door sales for a shady company. While making his rounds, he encounters a miserly old woman pimping her teenage niece, Mona, out of her remote ramshackle house. Mona offers herself but Franck refuses. He has a faltering conscience, a weak voice continually overruled by what he sees as self-interest.
With his marriage fraying, his bills piling up and his livelihood undependable, Franck devises a scheme with Mona to murder her hateful aunt and steal her money—a fortune tucked under the floorboards. Naturally, it gets complicated.
One of Série Noir’s strengths is the outstanding, multi-layered performance in the lead role by Patrick Dewaere. His Franck is angry, tender, savvy, delusional, conscientious, deranged, petulant, solicitous and worried—with good reason.
