D.
Claude Chabrol
Colour
In cinema terms, the French are much cooler than the
British, aren’t they? If you look at how grand and romantic Paris appears on
the cinema screen, and then contrast it with how dingy and provincial London
looks, you have to – and it pains me to admit this - say that France wins. It’s
by far the most cinematic country with a much grander film tradition and many
more great films. Of course as a citizen of these isles I will not admit French
superiority in any other matter (our cheeses are much better than theirs,
goddamnit!), to do so would see my British passport revoked and my bruised and
battered body dumped off The White Cliffs of Dover. But when it comes to
cinema, I feel I am on safer ground – they have the lead on us. Damn them!
A case in point, in the same year Robert Mitchum was playing
an aged Philip Marlowe on the dank streets of London, Stéphane Audran was essaying
a more original and yet still recognisable version of Marlowe on the lush and
golden streets of Paris.
But whereas one was directed by the dread hand of Michael
Winner, the other was being helmed by the French Hitchcock himself – the great
and equally balding, Claude Chabrol.
Audran is Michelle, a socialite who it’s hinted has some
kind of scandalous past. Outside a nightclub one evening (where she has pushed
away the attentions of a particularly hirsute date – like that bloke from ‘The
Joy of Sex’ made flesh), she encounters Veronique, an old acquaintance. The two
of them share a cab home and say goodbye with a Parisian kiss on the cheek and
a lingering embrace. Maybe the encounter would never have meant anything, but
the following morning Veronique arrives at Michelle’s apartment and asks to be
driven to Charles de Gaulle airport. Michelle senses that something is wrong,
but does it anyway. It turns out that Veronique’s boyfriend is lying dead in
their house, and having aided the main suspect’s escape, Michelle is questioned
as an accessory. Once the police free her though, this one time party girl
becomes Philip Marlowe in a tailored skirt and kitten heels, and starts to
investigate. She gets to know Veronique’s neighbours, Henri Robery and his wife
Sevine, and develops a flirtatious relationship with both – but also starts to
get nearer to what really happened that fateful night.
‘The Long Goodbye’ is the only Chandler novel in which
Marlowe manages to get his end away, for all the crackling dialogue and wanton
women in the other books, he always somehow resists. It therefore seems
appropriate that it was turned into the sexist and most sizzling Marlowe
adaptation of them all. (I like the Robert Altman version as well, but without
question Stéphane Audran is sexier than Elliot Gould.) There’s just something
so French about it all – the careless flirtations and the passion of the
affairs – which just suits this material so well. Paris in this film is a city
where cross and double cross seem a matter of course, just like infidelity and
wild homicidal passion – that’s the way of the world. The mystery therefore
plays out against a background where there are a dozen similar mysteries taking
place every day.
And Stéphane Audran makes a superb, if unorthodox, version
of Marlowe. The gender swap may be controversial, but it works – having a sexy
and somewhat mature woman ask these questions just adds a whole other frisson
to the piece. And despite her wild past and how sexy she looks with her eyebrow
raised, there is still a moral certainty to her that Chandler would have been
proud of. A moral authority and an inner steel, and those are the essential
ingredients every big screen Philip Marlowe needs.
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