Panique (1946)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Panique (1946) – J. Duvivier

Michel Simon plays Monsieur Hire, an outsider, probably Jewish, who is suspected by his neighbours of committing a murder (which we know was really committed by a local thug played by Paul Bernard). When the thug’s girlfriend returns from prison, having taken the rap for him, she moves into M. Hire’s hotel and they become acquainted. He implies that he has evidence that ties the real murderer to the crime and she feigns an interest in him in order to get into his apartment. We learn his sad story (his wife left him for his best friend) and feel sorry for him when he falls for the girlfriend, Alice (Viviane Romance). Indeed, Alice also begins to feel sympathy for M. Hire – but not enough to stop her from planting evidence of the murder (the victim’s handbag) in his apartment, at the request of her lover. Once the evidence is found, the gangster and his friends wind up the community, already negatively predisposed against Hire, and soon a vigilante mob is formed. In this way, the film is not dissimilar from other films which tell how easy it is for malicious rumours to gain sway over a group (see also Fritz Lang’s Fury, 1936). Coming just after WWII in France, it isn’t hard to read the film as a grimly pointed commentary about those who collaborated.  But, as directed by Julien Duvivier, the film takes time to develop its central character (Hire) and dwells enough on Alice’s psychology to give the audience a pang of regret when she suffers her (deserved) fate. The plainly artificial sets harken back to Carné and Prévert’s poetic realism but this film is less noir than melodrama but none the worse for that.