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| Michel Auclair comforts Danielle Darrieux in MURDER AT 45 RPM. |
A short update concerning my recent Boileau-Narcejac movie binge:
Though I was successful in locating Etienne Périer's MEURTRES EN 45 TOURS and English subtitles online, I remained very curious about the English dubbed version MURDER AT 45 RPM, which was briefly distributed here in the United States by MGM before everyone forgot it ever existed. Happily, I found a listing for it at Sinister Cinema and placed an order, which arrived just yesterday.
Based on a novel (AU COEUR PERDU) translated into English as HEART TO HEART, the film stars Danielle Darrieux, Jean Servais (THE DEVIL'S NIGHTMARE) and Michel Auclair as the usual romantic triangle, this time with Servais as the sadistic husband, who doubles as composer for Darrieux's star vocalist. In the standard Boileau-Narcejac situation, one of them is murdered and taunts the surviving suspects through a series of anonymously mailed recordings. Servais is especially good, somewhat reminiscent of Paul Meurisse in DIABOLIQUE, but the plot is a little too familiar and Périer's uninspired direction makes the film almost appear to have been shot for television, with fades-to-black like commercial breaks after almost every key scene. There is also a preponderance of static shots of characters watching television and driving from one place to another; it's simply not very cinematic. To make matters still more stale, the musical aspect of the film was already somewhat old-fashioned even at the time it was made. Aside from the pop music angle, the basic score of the film by Yves Claoué is pleasingly white-knuckled.
Despite these glum factors, I'm glad I grabbed this dubbed version because the English print is like a deep, nostalgic immersion into what the Late, Late Show used to be like when I was a kid falling in love with all those mysterious European films in the 1960s. This one doesn't bill Titra but it was very much one of their jobs, with Bernie Grant and Joyce Gordon voicing the principals, with (I think) George Gonneau dubbing at least one of the men so that Bernie didn't have to dub them all. Just the strange, canned sound of this old movie gave me the warm and fuzzies.
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