(Another in my 'Criterion Challenge series on Letterboxd, and this actually replaced a title I didn't finish earlier today!)
"No force, no vision, no guts. You're sickening. Has no one ever told you that? Seeing you here is becoming aeasthetically unbearable." (Monsieur Hire to Alfred)
That is definitely not the kind of talk I usually expect to hear in a Humanist Film-Noir - but from the French and by Michel Simon (the great Boudu) in Taking-No-BS mode? Sure, I buy it, and love it and want more.
Now *this* is my kind of 1940s classic filmmaking! Expressive, uncompromising and heartbreaking (but not incorrect) in its view of humanity. Duvivier's tale is full of Dark, brooding imagery, but also the seemingly unlikely warmth of Simon's performance (he's like the best professor you never thought youd get, beard and hair and all), all about what lies in the hearts of people who will deceive and create panic for a people who are ready to believe the worst in others.
It uses the framework and spine of a murder investigation, and there isn't much mystery since we find out who the killer is half an hour in to really make it about judgment and misjudging. And as for that moment where Alice finds out, staring off into space with a wonderful moment of film acting, or of not reacting, Romance shows one of the many scenes she is so powerful as a guilty-conscience filled Femme Fatale (redundant, I dunno) as she listens to this conniving, conventionally attractive monster who tells her his deeds in bed.
And, in the end of course, the extreme rush to judgment (with some help from planted/convenient evidence) leads to tragedy, the kind that could be easily prevented if the loudest and dumbest of the public just held back a little. Though it has the look and feel and even featurong the dastardly main couple of the characters at the center with Alfred and Alice of Hardboiled crime drama thay one can see in American films, it's also like the French Ox-Bow Incident in its tale of society run amok (and just after WW2, when people often looked away from who was actually doing the crimes to still blame, well, Jews).
Films like this are inherently harrowing and depict a modern Western world (or it could be Eastern too, let's not limit things) can fly off the handle because someone is an outsider or a little different (I know the comparisons aren't 1 to 1, but persecution is as persecution does in the Mob Rules thing). He's a "creep," someone who may even be, as is accused at one point, possibly a child molester - this gets shot down, but doesn't this very thing happen today? (Hed be called a "Groomer" pretty quickly, right?) And he's simply a... former lawyer who just wants to buy his meat and groceries and be left alone. In a way, this is all just another event at the Circus or Carnival, another attraction to get everyone away from the mercy go round to another helluva good show.
Duvivier casts all the supporting roles with a lack of subtlety, but it is fitting, ie the lady who is the loudmouth at the bar who does a lot to galvanize the public into their fervor even as one old man cries to let justice take its course. But it's the three main performers in Simon, Paul Bernard (the actual killer and the master manipilator) and Romance who make this powerful trifecta for the audience. It takes some scenes, but what's fascinating for me is not even Vivian Romance and Bernard, that's more what we expect to see in this Lets-Get-Away-with-it Plot but Simon and Romance that makes Panique so special.
He opens up to her and she, seemingly, to him; the scene where he tells her the astrological chart is a good contrast to when she visits the fortune teller who gives some information but doesn't make a connection. Simon and his Monsieur Hire does, and there's what could almost be called a friendship between the two... which she is going to betray at some point (and, without giving away the how, she does).
Is it fated for Alice to do what she does to M Hire? Is it fate for people to go from one mind-numbing attraction to another, all for the sake possibly of jacking up the Adrenaline until the next seeming catastrophe comes along? And of course this is, again, the immediate aftermath of WW2 when, I'm sure it's not a misplaced critique on Duvivier's part, people who should be now strong together are still going to be at their worst, and it anticipates of course the Blacklist and Communist trials and so on.
Panique exceeded any expectations I had and is a blistering, depressing critique of society while never ceasing to work as tense, romantic Film-Noir entertainment: this is to say, Genre, but using it for a (cracked) mirror.
