Tue 8 Mar 2011
A TV Series Review by Geoff Bradley: MAIGRET, Season 2 (1993).
Posted by Steve under Reviews , TV mysteries[15] Comments
MAIGRET. Granada TV, UK. Second series: six 60-min episodes. 14 March through 18 April 1993. Michael Gambon (Chief Inspector Jules Maigret), Geoffrey Hutchings (Sgt. Lucas), Jack Galloway (Inspector Janvier), James Larkin (Inspector LaPointe).
A second six part series of Maigret has recently been and gone. I watched with extra vigilance after the adverse comments about the first series in Mystery & Detective Monthly. I enjoyed this series. It’s steady and reliable without being flashy or exciting and adapts the stories well into a 50-minute format.
The difficulty of adapting stories from a long series of books to screen is to achieve a uniformity of time and character. The decision to shoot exterior scenes in Budapest, since it was easier to recreate 1950’s (the time period chosen for the series) Paris there rather than in the Paris of 1993 seemed reasonable, although exterior scenes were kept to a minimum anyway.
I do not subscribe to the theory that English actors speaking English portraying Frenchman speaking French should adopt the accent of a Frenchman speaking English badly (as, say, Poirot — although, of course, he’s Belgian). The producers, correctly in my opinion, used the appropriate English accent to portray the rank or position of the speaker, so a doctor would speak with a polished accent where a labourer would adopt a rougher less educated one. A foreign sounding accent was only used for characters who were not French and could be assumed to be speaking French with a foreign accent.
I thought an article in the current issue of Armchair Detective rather silly. It seems we should have had a French actor playing the part, although it isn’t made it clear if the actor should be speaking in French or English.
If English, I suppose we’d be looking for a French actor who speaks English but not well. If they ever make a series of Lindsey Davis’s books I wonder how they’re going to cast Falco? Perhaps they’ll be able to dig up an ancient Roman from somewhere.
The author of the article also says: “If we wanted an Englishman playing the part, we’d watch a repeat of the dreadful American TV movie starring Richard Harris.”
I’m quite at a loss as how to evaluate this statement. Apart from the fact that Harris is not English anyway, is he saying that once an actor has portrayed a character, even if badly, he would watch it repeatedly rather that watch an actor from the same country play the same role?
Anyway for the record the six stories were: “Maigret And The Night Club Bouncer,” “Maigret And The Hotel Majestic,” “Maigret On The Defensive,” “Maigret’s Boyhood Friend,” “Maigret And The Minister,” and “Maigret And The Maid.”
March 8th, 2011 at 12:36 pm
Gambon was a fine Maigret I thought, and the adaptations well done. I did think the atmosphere might have been a little better conveyed, but that was a minor quibble. As for the time period, the books are to some extent timeless, so anything from the thirties to the late fifties would suit the character and look of Paris.
I’ve never understood the accent problem some critics have. No one ever complained Richard Loo had a Chinese accent while playing all those Japanese villains. Is a historical movie set in ancient Rome better for an actor speaking English with a bad Italian accent (which is no more accurate to ancient Rome than English) or upper class Oxbridge or Middle Atlantic English?
That said, Harvey Keitel’s Brooklyn accented Paul in THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST was something of a hurdle to get over. A bit like Tony Curtis infamous “Yonder lies da castle of my fodder.”
The only time I object to accents is in some dubbing where they get too clever. For instance in CRIMSON RIVERS Vincent Cassell’s character is a tough street cop from Paris so they give him a vaguely Brooklyn accent and another cop from the rural South of France has a Southern cracker accent.
Don’t get clever, just let them speak understandable English.
The best Maigret’s were likely Jean Gabin, Rupert Davies from British television, and Charles Laughton in THE MAN IN THE EIFEL TOWER. Undoubtedly the worst was Richard Harris in that stupid tweed hat. I can’t recall his name, but the German actor in the West German Maigret series was good even though he was nothing like the character (small, fair, and quick). If I remember them rightly those were set in Sixties and looked it, but they were still entertaining.
I’m not really sure any visual media could quite reproduce the pleasures of Simenon and Maigret correctly. They are very much a mental state you allow yourself to slip into, with their own physical world (it’s always raining or snowing, Maigret always too hot)and milieu. Somehow watching Maigret sip Calvados or Pernod and smoking his pipe while brooding is not quite the same as experiencing it in print.
Someone once said that nothing really happens in the Maigret novels but it doesn’t happen brilliantly.
And again, as for the accents, I’m not really sure why a Frenchman speaking English pretending to speak French is better than an English actor speaking English pretending its French. Seems a bit esoteric to me. In that case the best bet would be to hire French actors speaking French and subtitle it for all us ignorant Americans still trying to conjugate French verbs.
Oh, and they did film the first of the Lindsey Davis Falco books — and who played Falco — Australian actor Bryan Brown.
And he was pretty good too, though they took far too many liberties with the plot.
I guess he came from Rome’s Outback.
March 8th, 2011 at 1:15 pm
And the Bruno Cremer French series (with English subtitles) is in active rotation on the Crime Drama slots on the small US public broadcasting network MHz WorldView.
March 8th, 2011 at 1:19 pm
“And again, as for the accents, I’m not really sure why a Frenchman speaking English pretending to speak French is better than an English actor speaking English pretending its French. Seems a bit esoteric to me.”
That would be my opinion too, David, if I thought I understood that sentence.
Just kidding! As usual you have cut to the heart of the matter — and have come up with the obvious solution. French actors speaking French with subtitles.
There is such a series, of course, and it’s on DVD. Only thing is, I don’t know if there are any subtitles:
Bruno Cremer played Commissaire Jules Maigret for 54 episodes on French TV between 1991 and 2005.
I’ve just checked. There is set of nine with subtitles on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Maigret-Collection-scrupules-linspecteur-chinoise/dp/B0018V98I0/ref=sr_1_3?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1299607530&sr=1-3
Perhaps Amazon-France will have them for less than the $90 asking price. You do need a multi-region player.
I did not know about a movie version of one of the Falco novels, and I’d be willing to wager that Geoff also did not when he wrote his review above.
It was Age of Treason, and made for TV (apparently) in 1993.
Says the author on her website:
“A film called The Age of Treason was made some years ago, ostensibly of The Silver Pigs, though who would know it? It departed from everything that I think makes the books special. This is the terrible side of Hollywood in particular and film companies in general. It taught me that authors will probably not be made rich and famous through film rights, that they should demand enough money to cover any pain, and that they have a duty to loyal readers not to readily go down the route of filmic disappointment.
“The BBC optioned the entire Falco series on what seemed decent terms (though I had grave doubts about their scripts). They bought Rome instead.
“Please: I do not want to speculate on who could play Falco in a film. If it ever happens the company will choose their actor depending on cost and availability. The BBC wanted to ‘create a star’; I think they were right.”
From http://www.lindseydavis.co.uk/radioandfilm.htm
This was such a long response to David’s Comment #1 that I see Todd was able to point out the Cremer portrayal of Maigret before I was finished. Well done, sir!
March 8th, 2011 at 3:14 pm
The British accent to many Americans is a foreign accent. So listening to a British accent do a French character can be like listening to the wrong accent. Listening to a French character done in the viewer’s native language such as “American” is one less distraction.
Sean Connery in “The Hunt For the Red October” does the worse Russian accent ever. I kept having to remind myself that Scotland was not a threat to American shores.
March 8th, 2011 at 5:23 pm
I’m not sure Connery was a lot worse than Ernest Borgnine’s Russian in ICE STATION ZEBRA, but it would be close — Ernie is much more annoyingly comic opera Russian though. Love the movie (though not as much as Howard Hughes) but they take much to long to shoot Ernie. For that matter Alf Kelljin was an awfully German sounding Russian if you want to pick nits.
Watching some old war picture with my father once I still recall him making a rather dry comment to the effect he never ran into a single German during the entire war or after who sounded anything like George Sanders, James Mason, or Basil Rathbone.
Then of course there are those notable Southern gentleman Lawrence Harvey, Leslie Howard, and Christopher Plummer. Though to be fair, Harvey does the West Texas accent dead on in WALK ON THE WILD SIDE — and I’ve lived there.
I know many people claim not to be able to understand British accents, but unless it something really bad like Manchester I can usually figure out what they are saying once I decode the slang. Still, there was a film made in Glasgow a few years ago that when released in London had to be subtitled, and several Brits have told me over the years that they might as well be in China as Manchester when it comes to understanding the accent.
I had an acquaintence born in Poland and raised in Germany who worked for thirty years in Oklahoma. When he went home no one could understand him. He spoke German with a Polish accent and an Okie drawl.
For that matter Tarzan who is British and spoke French before English always has an American accent in films (save for GREYSTOKE) while Jane, who is an American from Wisconsin always has a British accent.
AGE OF TREASON strayed near Davis plot once or twice, but only rarely. That said, it was an entertaining enough outing, and Brown wasn’t bad as Falco despite the Oz accent. I can understand she would have liked to see her book filmed (so would I), but just as a private eye movie set in post Nero Rome it was entertaining if average.
It aired on the E Mystery channel a few times.
My own pet peeve was Laurence Olivier’s various accents (I don’t know which was worse, his American, French, German, Dutch, or Russian). Great actor, but I wish no one had told him he did accents well — he didn’t.
Relatively few American actors played British parts in films — Charlton Heston, Vincent Price (who was also the Saint on radio), Orson Welles, Tyrone Power, Gary Cooper, Franchot Tone, Josheph Cotton, George C. Scott, Frederic March, Marlon Brando, Clark Gable — but only Welles, Scott,Brando, and Heston really bothered with the accent. March did suggest a bit of a burr once or twice in MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS.
But then you can get too relaxed about the whole business of maintaining some sembalence of realsim. I’m still trying to figure out what part of Denmark Denzel Washington’s guard in Kenneth Brannagh’s HAMLET came from. At least Mel Gibson resisted saying “g’day mate” to Yorrick’s skull in his version.
One of the oldest rules in Hollywood — at least since sound came in — was that villains and older figures from the past were invaribly British. Though it could get a bit funny as in the ROBE where they are all British save for Jay Robinson’s Caligula and Victor Mature’s Demetrius. I guess emperors and Greeks had different accents (that happened to Mature a lot, he’s the lone American accent in THE EGYPTIAN too).
For that matter has anyone ever figured out how Hedy Lamar and Angela Lansbury were supposed to be sisters in SAMSON AND DELILAH?
But let’s be honest, if your worry about this stuff you might as well give up on movies and stick to books. Generally if we like the film we don’t care, and we only start nit picking when for some reason we don’t. It’s fantasy, and if you start pulling at the threads you’ll quickly see just how fragile a fantasy it is.
March 8th, 2011 at 5:57 pm
I remember when the BBCA network had a voice over (Eric Idle, I believe) tell Americans how to use close captioning for subtitles and how the British did not mind.
I worked at a movie theatre in 1989 when Denzel Washington’s FOR QUEEN & COUNTRY was released. I had to deal with many upset ticket holders unable to understand a word anyone said in the picture.
David, I remember the British film that came out subtitled, but the name escapes me at the moment. It might have been FOR QUEEN & COUNTRY or something released just after it.
March 8th, 2011 at 7:05 pm
Michael
The one I’m thinking of was made in Scotland, a thriller if I recall rightly and played here on IFC. Since then I think a few films have come out in England from different regions and with subtitles.
I recall something similar to your FOR QUEEN AND COUNTRY experience with Sean Connery in THE HILL when it came out. All the British soldiers barking at each other in staccato accents defeated a lot of American audiences.
Just prior to America entering WW II we were secretly training RAF pilots in Terrell in East Texas, and the collision of the two accents was not pretty according to both sides. I interviewed some of the British pilots when they came back for the 50th anniversary, and they admitted they didn’t understand half of what they heard for the length of their training even though they mostly had a great time.
Bismark famously claimed the great fact of the Twentieth Century would be that the Americans and British spoke the same language, but often as not Chuchill was closer when he said two great nations separated by the same language.
I remember the funny bit on BBCA too — especially when they admitted they sometimes couldn’t understand the accents themselves.
I recall a philologist in the sixties though who said if you wanted to hear English spoken the way it was in Shakespeare’s day you need only go into the back country of the Ozarks or Great Smokies.
Still much of it is what we are accustomed to. If you look back Ronald Colman, Errol Flynn, Cary Grant, and Ray Milland played quite a few Americans and no one really complained, though I do recall Michael Caine discussing once seeing a film where Grant was playing an upper class English character at a theater in his native part of London and the audience howling because they could all hear the Cockney twang still lingering in Grant’s accent.
Caine also admitted when they heard his upper class accent in ZULU he had to slip out of the theater to avoid the laughter. But then no one fools the home crowd.
Though I have to admitt I have to supress the desire to ask what part of England Gary Cooper, Robert Preston, and Ray Milland are supposed to be from whenever I watch BEAU GESTE. It’s hard enough buying them as brothers. If it wasn’t such a great film my willing suspension of disbelief would be sprained.
March 8th, 2011 at 8:09 pm
Then there are those such as Hugh Laurie who HOUSE fans might not recognize listening to A BIT OF FRY AND LAURIE and BLACKADDER III
March 8th, 2011 at 9:47 pm
Their are quite a few British and Australian actors today who do a dead on American accent — likely because they grew up watching American television series in their home countries.
Before that there were a handful of Canadian and other non Brit actors working in England who got most of the American roles not actually played by Americans — Robert Beatty Cec Linder, and William Sylvester were among them. Before them Canadian’s Raymond Massey and Walter Pidgeon played about equal numbers of English and American roles — Massey even playing Sherlock Holmes.
I don’t know if the accents or the actors ar better, but now when you hear a Brit doing an American accent or an American playing a Brit they seem much better than they once were.
Michael Caine claimed the late Susannah York did so many American roles she had trouble going back to an English accent.
Re the whole Maigret thing though it strikes me that Gambon is the only actor to play Maigret who was ever seriously considered to play James Bond. I wonder if he drank his Pernod shaken and not stirred?
March 8th, 2011 at 11:32 pm
I remember this program as a child, seeing Michael Gambon was awesome. He reminds me of how my dad was before his stroke, resolute, tenacious but damned well stubborn at times even when he ought to open up.
George Simenon really knew how to write.
March 8th, 2011 at 11:51 pm
And, as David and I play comment tennis, Maigret was not the first detective Gambon played. He was great in the original SINGING DETECTIVE.
March 9th, 2011 at 12:28 am
Loren
All the more reason to find where I’ve stashed my boxed set of DVDs!
Everyone else
IMDB makes a big fuss about another character that Richard Harris and Michael Gambon both played. Without going to look, do you know?
— Steve
PS. It’s OK if you don’t. I didn’t know, and there’s no reason I would.
March 9th, 2011 at 1:43 pm
Steve
You have to wonder if Harris knew Dumbledore would turn out to be gay?
Michael
Gambon was wonderful in SINGING DETECTIVE (certainly better than Robert Downey). It’s just that there aren’t many actors you would cast (and brilliantly) as Maigret who at any time in their career were seriously considered to play James Bond.
The Maigret series with Gambon did not fare well with critics here or in England. I don’t know how it did with the public — it may have proved too expensive to continue — but it certainly didn’t grab the public imagination like the earlier Rupert Davies series had.
Gambon was fine, but over all I found the series to be poorly done. It never found its voice or captured the unique feel of Simenon’s Paris — Maigret’s Paris. For that matter Gambon wasn’t given scripts where he could tap into the contradictions that make Maigret such a compelling character. It was as if once they cast Gambon they quit trying. Maigret’s humanity, compassion, sudden violence, his social discomfort, his patient war of nerves with suspects — none of that is really in the scripts for Gambon to work with.
You can’t adapt Maigret and Simenon the way you do Agatha Christie or Sayers. The plots alone aren’t enough to keep viewers attention. They rise or fall on the viewers identification with Maigret, and this series never really let Gambon give that to the audience. They made the character into just another cop — which is not Simenon nor Maigret.
They aren’t bad television crime/mystery dramas, but they aren’t good Maigret or Simenon despite Gambon’s efforts.
Gambon is the resason to watch these, and worth watching certainly, but overall the series never found its voice or point of view and its vision of Maigret’s world was singularly flat and uninvolving.
I didn’t comment on the French Cremar Maigret because I haven’t seen it though he should be well cast in the role. Maybe if the DVD collection drops below that $90 mark I’ll eventually see it.
Sadly the legendary Jean Gabin Maigret does not seem to be on DVD or have been on VHS — even in the gray market or in Region 2 format.
March 10th, 2011 at 3:51 pm
Re: Gambon/Bond. I recall a very funny interview with Gambon, where he recalled arguing with the Bond producers that he was totally unsuited to play 007 because he had man-boobs. ‘Don’t worry,’ he was told ‘we’ll just rub them with ice if you ever have to take your shirt off!’
I notice 5 producers of his MAIGRET series. You have to wonder if this had something to do with the general lack of focus. I’ve also heard that there were huge changes going on in the background at Granada Studios. Probably not the best situation in which to take on Simenon.
As regards Americans doing British accents, I have to say that both Gregory Peck and Charlton Heston were both convincing in, respectively, THE SEA WOLVES and KHARTOUM. It’s not just about voice, but also about style and manner. Both Heston and Peck had an old fashioned formality which stopped them from being jarring. Cary Grant could play Americans and English equally, probably because NO-ONE else talked like he did.
March 12th, 2011 at 9:15 pm
Peck and Heston both did well with the British accent, though both had quite a bit of practice over the years.
And truthfully audiences just squinted and agreed to accept Errol Flynn, David Niven, Ray Milland, George Sanders, Tom Conway, or James Mason as Americans because they liked thme and their films, though Milland like Grant could come closer to an actual American sounding voice.
I did have a bit of trouble with Humphrey Bogart as French in PASSAGE TO MARSEILLES and WER’E NO ANGELS, but its one of those situations where you just had to give them the conceit.
I always divided Brando films into two catergories — those where you couldn’t understand anything he said and those where he had a bad British accent.
Still, they had enough sense in LIVES OF THE BENGAL LANCERS to explain that Gary Cooper was Canadian and in DODGE CITY to mention Flynn was Irish, though John Wayne and Jim Arness as German’s in THE SEA CHASE sort of strained my ears. At that it was easier to buy than Yul Brynner as a Sounterner in SOUND AND THE FURY, or Michael Caine as the only Cockney Souterner in HURRY SUNDOWN.