"Don't forget that Radek had nothing to expect from life. He was not even sure he could hold out until his sickness swept him away. Perhaps he would be reduced to jumping in the Seine one night when he no longer had enough small change to pay for his cafe au lait."
Maigret speaking in Georges Simenon's La tete d'un homme (1931)
La tete d'un homme was one of ten novels about Inspector Jules Maigret that Simenon wrote in 1931 and the third to be made into a film (see my post of June 8, 2016 about La nuit du carrefour). Director Duvivier took Simenon's novel and reassembled it into a more linear form, with Maigret's role somewhat diminished, though the story remained unchanged. Simenon's novel starts with Maigret engineering Joseph Heurtin's escape from jail, with Maigret convinced that Heurtin did not do the murder for which he was convicted -- no motive -- and that Heurtin would lead him to the real murderer. The film begins with the murder, for which a man named Radek has cleverly framed Heurtin. Heurtin does lead Maigret to Radek and a cat-and-mouse game, reminiscent of Dostoevsky, begins.
Duviver uses wipes and tilted camera angles to achieve the disorienting effects of Simenon's prose, where nothing is quite what it seems. Maigret is played by Harry Baur, an actor in a number of Duvivier's films, and the murderer Radek is effectively played by Valery Inkijinoff. The cinematography is by French veteran Armand Thirard. The film is one of dozens made from Simenon's novels.
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