Hardboiled: Three Pulp Thriller by Alain Corneau


France’s critical reassessment of Hollywood genre pictures gave credibility to filmmakers whose work had been dismissed as lightweight entertainment back in the U.S. And no genre got more love than film noir, a label added after-the-fact to post-war pulp thrillers that focused on the darker side of the American dream.  Director Alain Corneau puts these concepts in a cultural blender, reinterpreting the moody, morally ambiguous books and movies that inspired him to produce a trio of films that are both uniquely noir and uniquely French at the same time.

Police Python 375 (1976) takes its cue from Dirty Harry but was actually adapted from a 1946 novel used as the basis for The Big Clock and the Kevin Costner-Gene Hackman thriller No Way Out.  Yves Montand stars as aging supercop Marc Ferrot who must investigate himself after his lover is murdered by a superior officer.  Covering up evidence and avoiding witnesses, Ferrot scrambles to find the real killer before his fellow officers can connect the dots. Embracing genre conventions with a refreshing lack of pretension, Corneau’s film is an intricately plotted crowd-pleaser that stacks one tense situation on top of another Even if the gun-fetishizing intro and conclusion feel like a film apart, Simone Signoret’s performance as an unlikely domesticated femme fatale is in a class of its own. 

Named after a series of French literary crime novels but based on Jim Thompson’s A Hell of a Woman, Corneau’s next film, Serie Noire (1979), is a monumental achievement in almost every sense of the word.  Frank Poupart (Patrick Dewaere) is a failed salesman, poor husband and all-around loser who’s still a good guy at heart.  But a chance meeting with teenage prostitute leads to a plan than involves robbery, murder and the betrayal of the few morals he had left. Elevated by a revelatory performance from Dewaere, Serie Noirecounterposes the escapist thrills of Hollywood gangster films with the ugly reality of urban life; where fate doubles-down on every bad decision and there’s no such thing as good luck.

Choice of Arms (1981) changes the venue from urban to urbane, reuniting the director with Yves Montand as a retired gangster whose new existence among the cultural elite is jeopardized by a gun-crazy escaped prisoner (Gerard Depardieu) intent on getting his pound of flesh…and some quick cash.  Much more polished and controlled than the adrenaline rush of Serie Noire, Corneau’s film is an almost existential take on traditional noir anxieties of identity and power.  French film icon Catherine Deneuve, whose faraway eyes and untouchable demeanor make her the ultimate trophy wife, is the cog which these wheels of raging masculinity circle around. Choice of Arms, the only film in the collection not based on a previous work, offers up a painful collision of coincidence and circumstance that always seem to end up in regret.

As high-minded as that sounds, all three films are entertainment first and foremost. Corneau, unlike fellow French cinematic provocateur Jean-Luc Godard, always has the audience in mind.  And Radiance’s limited edition three-disc Blu-ray set takes curation to the next level, offering up amazing transfers, an audio commentary, interviews, an archival documentary, visual essay and liner notes in a rigid collector’s box.  You won’t see three better films this year. 

 

 

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