Sat 20 Mar 2010
A Movie Review by Dan Stumpf: THE MAN ON THE EIFFEL TOWER (1949).
Posted by Steve under Mystery movies , Reviews[4] Comments
THE MAN ON THE EIFFEL TOWER. RKO, 1949. Charles Laughton (Inspector Jules Maigret), Franchot Tone, Burgess Meredith, Robert Hutton, Jean Wallace, Patricia Roc, Belita.
Screenplay: Harry Brown, based on the novel A Battle of Nerves (La Tete d’un Homme, Paris, 1931) by Georges Simenon. Director: Burgess Meredith.
The Man on the Eiffel Tower can be picked up on DVD for about a buck at bargain stores, and it’s well worth the effort. Burgess Meredith took a one-time shot at directing this and stars as a myopic scissors-grinder set up to be the patsy when Franchot Tone commits murder-for-hire.
Tone’s scheme works with creepy efficiency (A scene of Meredith stumbling about the murder scene looking for his smashed glasses prefigures the well-known Twilight Zone episode.) and Burgess seems headed for the Gallic equivalent of Slice-o-Matic till Inspector Maigret intuits the solution and sets about putting things right
The plot moves swiftly and with some intelligence, but this is basically an actor’s movie — watch it to see Burgess Meredith’s hammy underplaying, or Franchot Tone’s manic-depressive killer, a brilliant Raskolnikov flinging himself up against Charles Laughton’s relaxed, authoritative Maigret/Porfiry, who realizes the only way to resolve the problem is to gently coax a confession from a psychotic.
This felicitous mix of writing (courtesy of Harry Brown) directing and acting doesn’t come along all that often, and it provides here a deal of genuine pleasure for mystery fans and movie lovers like me.
March 21st, 2010 at 11:33 am
This is very close to the Simenon novel and Laughton’s Maigret to the way he is in the books, if a trifle more genial. By this point Laughton was often a bit hammy, but reins it in here.
This is one of those little films that has some real surprises for the viewer. Not as easy to find but also worth finding THE MAN WHO WATCHED THE TRAIN’S GO BY (PARIS EXPRESS) with Claude Rains from a non Maigret.
March 21st, 2010 at 2:03 pm
Laughton, I should add falls in the top rank of Maigret actors. For my money the best is Jean Gabin, who was Simenon’s favorite (though Laughton is closer to the physical presence of the character in many ways).
In Europe virtually every country has it’s own Maigret from films and television with the best known the British Rupert Davies and the German version (a few of the German Maigret’s were dubbed in English and made it to American television) — though the dapper and genial German actor never really seemed much like Maigret to me.
Michael Gambon (Dumbledore in the later Harry Potter films) was Maigret for one BBC series that played here on MYSTERY!, and there is a simply awful made for television film with Richard Harris (ironically also Dumbledore) woefully miscast as Maigret.
Maigret in the books is a large man, usually portrayed in late middle age, perpetually smoking his pipe, nursing a glass of Pernod, Calvados, or beer, and usually dressed for the cold Parisian rain while trapped inside in some stuffy and hot room. He seems almost always to be either cold and wet or hot and overdressed.
As in this film his famed method is to listen, wait, and allow the criminal to confess his crimes. Like Father Brown or Columbo he is an intuitive detective and always seems to know who the killer is, pursuing a literal battle of nerves (as the original title suggests) as his larger than life presence shadows the criminal.
March 21st, 2010 at 3:33 pm
“Maigret in the books is a large man, usually portrayed in late middle age, perpetually smoking his pipe, nursing a glass of Pernod, Calvados, or beer, and usually dressed for the cold Parisian rain while trapped inside in some stuffy and hot room. He seems almost always to be either cold and wet or hot and overdressed.”
That’s Maigret, all of his books summed up in one paragraph!
Or two, if David, we can include your followup one.
— Steve
March 23rd, 2010 at 6:26 am
I’ve tried like a sunuvab#tch to read Simenon, but to me it’s like watching a coffin warp.