MAIGRET
****
Director: Patrice Leconte
Screenwriters: Patrice Leconte and Jérôme Tonnerre, adapted from the novel Maigret et la jeune morte by Georges Simenon.
Principal cast:
Gérard Depardieu
Jade Labeste
Mélanie Bernier
Aurore Clément
Hervé Pierre
Elizabeth Bourgine
Country: France/Belgium
Classification: M
Runtime: 89 mins.
Australian release date: 26 May 2022.
Georges Simenon’s famous French police inspector Jules Maigret has been portrayed on-screen about as often as Agatha Christie’s equally famous Belgian sleuth Hercule Poirot. Since 1932, he’s been played by Pierre Renoir, Abel Tarride, Harry Baur, Albert Préjean and the great Jean Gabin, and that’s even before we leave France; in English language productions, Charles Laughton, Rupert Davies, Michael Gambon, Richard Harris, even Mr. Bean… sorry, I mean Rowan Atkinson, have all taken on the role. Further afield, international versions of Maigret have been produced in Italy, Russia, Germany and Japan. Now it’s the turn of the legendary French actor Gérard Depardieu to take his place as the pipe-smoking commissaire in Patrice Leconte’s Maigret, fitting casting for a character Simenon imagined as “a large powerfully built gentleman [with] a pipe, a bowler hat, a thick overcoat.” Leconte and his co-writer Jérôme Tonnerre have based their screenplay on the plot of the 46th novel in the series, Maigret and the Dead Girl.
It's 1953 in Paris and life is still pretty grim after the upheaval of World War II. When a young woman’s dead body is found in the street without any identification, something stirs inside of Maigret (Depardieu) and he refuses to let her go to her grave unnamed and unremembered. The only clue to her identity is the dated but once fashionable haute couture evening gown that she is wearing. As he ploddingly and insistently makes his enquiries, he encounters another jeune fille, Betty (Jade Labeste), who was acquainted with the dead girl but didn’t know much about her or her background. She also reminds Maigret of someone from his past and this connection makes him even more determined to, as he says, “seek what’s called the truth.”
Leconte’s cinematographer, Yves Angelo, keeps the lighting dark in both interior and exterior scenes and his camera never stops moving, or should that be, prowling. This suits Depardieu’s depiction of the detective because he’s a bulky man who moves deliberately and talks infrequently. He’s pensive and tends to work alone much of the time, chewing over the crumbs of knowledge that come his way. When he’s asked by someone, “How do you make your suspects talk?” he answers, “I don’t. I listen to them,” and this explains his overall approach to solving crimes. There are no shootouts or car chases in Maigret; that’s not the way he works. He’s cerebral, a thinker and big Gérard does a terrific job of showing the inner life of the man. We get insights into Maigret’s personal life, too, some of which come through seeing him with his doctor, who informs him that he’s out of shape and must give up his beloved pipe, and with Madame Maigret (Anne Loiret) at home. These scenes are revealing and go some way to justifying the sombre tone of the film - apart from the fact that he’s attempting to unravel a shocking murder, that is. There’s a personal reason for his despondency. As the director puts it, when talking of Simenon’s character, “It's very rare to find this purely emotional part in crime novels, even among the greatest authors.”
This is not the first time Leconte has used Simenon’s work for a film; his great 1989 movie Monsieur Hire also used one of the prolific author’s novels as it’s source material. He’s a fan who says of Simenon, “What I liked from the start was his almost cinematic writing: [he] depicts normal people, people who seem to have no history, but who turn out to have a history too. The atmospheres, the places, the feelings, the troubles, and this often overwhelming ‘casting’ carried me away, touched me.” And, indeed, Maigret is a touching film because it shows us a man who’s not really searching for a killer, he’s searching for a lost soul.
Screenwriters: Patrice Leconte and Jérôme Tonnerre, adapted from the novel Maigret et la jeune morte by Georges Simenon.
Principal cast:
Gérard Depardieu
Jade Labeste
Mélanie Bernier
Aurore Clément
Hervé Pierre
Elizabeth Bourgine
Country: France/Belgium
Classification: M
Runtime: 89 mins.
Australian release date: 26 May 2022.
Georges Simenon’s famous French police inspector Jules Maigret has been portrayed on-screen about as often as Agatha Christie’s equally famous Belgian sleuth Hercule Poirot. Since 1932, he’s been played by Pierre Renoir, Abel Tarride, Harry Baur, Albert Préjean and the great Jean Gabin, and that’s even before we leave France; in English language productions, Charles Laughton, Rupert Davies, Michael Gambon, Richard Harris, even Mr. Bean… sorry, I mean Rowan Atkinson, have all taken on the role. Further afield, international versions of Maigret have been produced in Italy, Russia, Germany and Japan. Now it’s the turn of the legendary French actor Gérard Depardieu to take his place as the pipe-smoking commissaire in Patrice Leconte’s Maigret, fitting casting for a character Simenon imagined as “a large powerfully built gentleman [with] a pipe, a bowler hat, a thick overcoat.” Leconte and his co-writer Jérôme Tonnerre have based their screenplay on the plot of the 46th novel in the series, Maigret and the Dead Girl.
It's 1953 in Paris and life is still pretty grim after the upheaval of World War II. When a young woman’s dead body is found in the street without any identification, something stirs inside of Maigret (Depardieu) and he refuses to let her go to her grave unnamed and unremembered. The only clue to her identity is the dated but once fashionable haute couture evening gown that she is wearing. As he ploddingly and insistently makes his enquiries, he encounters another jeune fille, Betty (Jade Labeste), who was acquainted with the dead girl but didn’t know much about her or her background. She also reminds Maigret of someone from his past and this connection makes him even more determined to, as he says, “seek what’s called the truth.”
Leconte’s cinematographer, Yves Angelo, keeps the lighting dark in both interior and exterior scenes and his camera never stops moving, or should that be, prowling. This suits Depardieu’s depiction of the detective because he’s a bulky man who moves deliberately and talks infrequently. He’s pensive and tends to work alone much of the time, chewing over the crumbs of knowledge that come his way. When he’s asked by someone, “How do you make your suspects talk?” he answers, “I don’t. I listen to them,” and this explains his overall approach to solving crimes. There are no shootouts or car chases in Maigret; that’s not the way he works. He’s cerebral, a thinker and big Gérard does a terrific job of showing the inner life of the man. We get insights into Maigret’s personal life, too, some of which come through seeing him with his doctor, who informs him that he’s out of shape and must give up his beloved pipe, and with Madame Maigret (Anne Loiret) at home. These scenes are revealing and go some way to justifying the sombre tone of the film - apart from the fact that he’s attempting to unravel a shocking murder, that is. There’s a personal reason for his despondency. As the director puts it, when talking of Simenon’s character, “It's very rare to find this purely emotional part in crime novels, even among the greatest authors.”
This is not the first time Leconte has used Simenon’s work for a film; his great 1989 movie Monsieur Hire also used one of the prolific author’s novels as it’s source material. He’s a fan who says of Simenon, “What I liked from the start was his almost cinematic writing: [he] depicts normal people, people who seem to have no history, but who turn out to have a history too. The atmospheres, the places, the feelings, the troubles, and this often overwhelming ‘casting’ carried me away, touched me.” And, indeed, Maigret is a touching film because it shows us a man who’s not really searching for a killer, he’s searching for a lost soul.