'Genius is just a word, filmmaking is a craft.' ~ Julien Duvivier

Julien Duvivier made around 70 feature films in a career that spanned almost 50 years and within that span he worked in a variety of genres - comedies, musicals, thrillers and dramas but it was in the dark side of the human condition that he seemed most at home. In 1956 and out of favour and fashion with critics he made film number sixty, teaming up again with the immortal Jean Gabin to deliver as fine a film as any from his prime. Truffaut’s infamous article ‘A Certain Tendency in French Cinema’  had rendered last generation directors like Duvivier redundant as far as relevance was concerned but he continued to run his own race and of times prove them wrong.  

Catherine (Danièle Delorme), a sweet faced young woman arrives off the train amidst the morning bustle of the Les Halles markets and seeks out the noted restaurant of André Châtelin (Jean Gabin), her mother’s ex-husband. She eventually finds him to inform him that Gabrielle (Lucienne Bogaert), his hated ex-wife is dead and that, now homeless, she is moving to Paris. Châtelin decides to help her, to the objections of his housekeeper and of his mother and his young friend Gérard (Gérard Blain) is also suspicious. Catherine drives a wedge between the two men and it becomes obvious to everyone but Châtelin that she is not as innocent as she seems.

The opening song, a tender French ballad on the surface, has some pointers as to the cup of bile we’re about to be offered – “Now is the killer’s hour, the hour of poison and rope, In order to find greater pleasures in the arms of her new honey…”  Despite the pretty warbling, the message is clear - this will be no Disney film. Duvivier then has fun with the set-up, showing Châtelin in his element – serving the President of France and his ministers as easily as pouring Coca-Cola for the loud mouthed and uncouth Yanks who have to tick his restaurant off their must do French tourist experiences list. The character is warm, equal handed and straightforward in his dealings and therefore easy prey for a scheming and attractive young woman.

Gérard is attracted to the pretty girl and Châtelin approves as he sees Gérard as the son he never had. Catherine moves in with Châtelin and his housekeeper sniffs a rat, alluding to the possibility that Catherine may be his daughter. The older man continues to help the woman and it soon becomes plain that she plans to fleece him of his business by marrying him and killing him off for the inheritance. Duvivier handles his chess pieces brilliantly, slowly revealing the threat that Catherine represents as she seduces Gérard and gaslights him about Châtelin’s true nature, ‘Why should I lie to you?’ Her motives remain unclear until we learn her mother is not dead but staying at a nearby fleabag hotel in a drug addicted and sadly reduced state. Catherine’s true nature is first revealed when an old boyfriend arrives unexpectedly at Les Halles to talk to her but she rejects him before he jumps in front of truck and is killed. She barely misses a beat as she continues on to see her mother in secret.

Châtelin takes her to visit his mother (Germaine Kerjean), at her hotel business in the country, but she is suspicions of Catherine and tells her son, ‘She gives me the chills.’ Soon Catherine causes worry by disappearing for days before she turns up drunk on Châtelin’s doorstep and finally seduces him, cooing softly, ‘I don’t like young men.’ The isolation that their frowned upon union brings is presented in a lonely wedding for two with no guests at Châtelin’s closed restaurant. Duvivier builds the interconnecting web of tension brilliantly and never overplays his hand as we surge to an inevitable tragic end.

Voici La Temps Des Assassins is first class Film Noir at every level. Jean Gabin is in top form as he re-established himself as the first man in French cinema, after a decade of hit and miss post war apres his return to France via a stint in a tank command for the liberation of Paris. He’d fallen out with one of his key collaborators in Marcel Carné, over the casting of his girlfriend Marlene Dietrich, and languished in films that performed well below what he’d been used to. But, in the couple of years preceding he’d made up with and worked with Carné twice (and broken up with La Dietrich) and Jacques Becker helped enormously with Touchez pas au Grisbi which gave Gabin a defined, mature identity for audiences to embrace. Duvivier continued that path by giving Gabin a role he could inhabit totally, an older alpha male who could possibly no longer reasonably expect to woo the young ingénue and yet still walk that delicate line. Gabin delivers his usual deft performance, so effortless and full of subtleties and strength and reminds every one of his presence and worth, it’s the beating centre of the piece.

Danièle Delorme is wonderful as the scheming Catherine and makes the most of a part that calls on her to be vulnerable princess and heartless bitch. Delorme had spent years on the fringes of French film in small parts and had risen to a few starring roles before Duvivier delivered her this plum. She is always watchable and her tantrum scene in her mother’s shitty hotel room where she discovers her with an old lover and she screams, ‘Love is filth!’ at her drunk mother is particularly strong. Gérard Blain is effective as the earnest, younger man and Germaine Kerjean and Gabrielle Fontan as Châtelin’s mother and housekeeper respectively are memorable. Mention too of the superb Lucienne Bogaert as the odious Gabrielle is essential, as she leaves us in no doubt as from whence Catherine’s poisonous heart has come.

Duvivier ratchets up the tension expertly as Catherine’s lies split Chatelin and Gérard and Gabrielle is revealed to be alive. Châtelin locks up his wife at his mother’s establishment, where she escapes and is whipped (you read that correctly) by his mother. Duvivier never backs away from exploring the nastiness and bitterness that haunts the story, and in true style he leaves Catherine’s suitably sordid demise not to Châtelin, but to Gérard’s vengeful dog, who tears her to pieces in her mother’s cheap hotel room – a cynical and jaw dropping fate in keeping with the cynicism Duvivier was regularly able to tap. 

Jean Wiener’s lyrical score is totally in sync with Duvivier’s vision, no surprise since they’d worked together several times since 1934, including on La Bandera (with Gabin) – Wiener had also done two Renoir’s (La Crime de Monsieur Lange, Las Bas Fonds) before hiding from the Nazis during the occupation and working via a ‘front’ to earn a living. He reunited with Duvivier after the war on Panique and on a couple of 1950s projects including this film. He worked until the 1980s and notably with Robert Bresson in the 1960s on Au Hazard Balthazar and Mouchette. Duvivier shot the film with his frequent collaborator and one of the most significant cinematographer’s in French cinema, Armand Thirard, and his fluid moves and brilliant framing is a joy from start to finish, in this their 16^th film together.

Truffaut found plenty to admire with the film, seemingly against the grain of the ‘received’ history of the Cahiers crowd, (although Godard would tear Duvivier a new one a few years later) – but here Truffaut gushed of the film, ‘It seems to me his best, where one can sense the control over every aspect, script, mise-en-scène, acting, image, music, etc… control by a filmmaker who has arrived at total confidence in himself and his vocation.’  Obviously Duvivier had not made a cinema du papa film here, no staid literary classic adapted and no bright box office stars (Gabin not yet again a certain bet) and a story that he’d co-written - so a personal film as such in the eyes of the tastemakers du jour. If by personal it revealed Duvivier’s attraction to the dark side of humanity, then it was slightly disturbing. Of course Duvivier could confound expectations by making light populist comedies with Fernandel to draw the crowds, but it seems he was in his element when evil stalked the halls and murder was in the air.