"Jojo the mechanic's mistake, when he saw me suddenly turn up and, fearing I might discover everything, sent a driver away with a spare wheel full of diamonds that was too small for the lorry."
--Inspector Maigret in Georges Simenon's La Nuit du Carrefour (Penguin, 1931), translated by Linda Coverdale.
It is unusual for a good movie to be made from a good book, but this happened when Jean Renoir made La Nuit du Carrefour in 1932. What Renoir was able to do was make visual Simenon's limited descriptions and give behavioral characteristics to Simenon's characters. While doing this Renoir also heightened the class-consciousness already in Simenon's novel. The character of Maigret reminds me of Ross MacDonald's Lew Archer in the way we learn much about both characters from their dialogue, with little description necessary. (MacDonald even used some elements of La Nuit du Carrefour in his novel The Chill,1963). Maigret solves things by observation and interrogation rather than by the ratiocination of Holmes or Poirot.
The crossroads where the movie and book take place is small and not too far outside of Paris. It is a place where Frenchmen are prone to suggest that all foreigners should be deported, where Jews are not particularly wanted, where the memory of the the Great War is still intense and where women are expected to behave properly. There are only three houses -- none of them particularly nice -- and it rains constantly. Renoir shot his film mostly at night and there is a beautiful car chase illuminated only by the headlights of the pursuing car. The movie is almost as confusing in its plot as Howard Hawks's The Big Sleep (1946); it turns out that almost everyone who lives or works at the crossroads is guilty of something, as Maigret proves that the country is as corrupt as the city and Renoir proves to be as good a visual stylist as Simenon is a verbal one.
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