THE SLEEPING CAR MURDER

Yves Montand and Jean-Louis Trintignant

THE SLEEPING CAR MURDER (aka Compatiment tueurs.1965). Director: Costa-Gavras.

When a train traveling from Marseilles pulls into Paris, a young woman is found strangled to death in a sleeper compartment. Inspector Graziani (Yves Montand of The Wages of Fear) and his partner Jean-Lou Gabert (Claude Mann) investigate the murder and to their astonishment discover that someone else is reaching the witnesses, the other passengers in the murder car who disembarked in Paris, first, and shooting them! The witnesses include the actress Eliane Darres (Simone Signoret of Games), who has a younger lover,  Eric (Jean-Louis Trintignant); Rene Cabourg (Michel Piccoli of Danger: Diabolik), who is resentful that women generally snub him, as did the victim; Daniel (Jacques Perrin), a young runaway who rides the train without a ticket; Bambi (Catherine Allegret), a young lady who takes him to her apartment for sex and sustenance; and others. The Sleeping Car Murder is suspenseful and has some good actors in it, but despite some intriguing developments, it's a bit of a let-down once you realize that the basic premise is pretty much lifted from Agatha  Christie -- not Murder on the Orient Express, but "The Alphabet Murders," which was also filmed that same year. At least this has different plot developments and an unexpected final twist as well as some homoerotic elements (Eric pours through a muscle man magazine in front of an oblivious Eliane in an early scene; the identity of his male lover comes as quite a surprise.) The picture drags a bit after the final revelation and the film's score is lousy, but Sleeping Car is still an attention-holder. With a mysterious killer wandering around in a black raincoat killing people, the movie almost reminds one of an Italian giallo film, but the murders are neither gruesome nor graphic. Signoret, Trintignant, Piccoli, Mann and the others are all quite effective, but Montand looks pretty bored throughout. He was married to Signoret at the time, from 1951 until his death in 1984. Catherine Allegret is Signoret's daughter by her first husband.

Verdict: Interesting French thriller .. with reservations. **1/2.

SANCTUARY

SANCTUARY (1961). Director: Tony Richardson.

A housekeeper named Nancy (Odetta) is sentenced to hang because she murdered an infant, but strangely the baby's mother, Temple (Lee Remick), wants to save the murderess' life. To that end she tells her father, Governor Drake (Howard St. John) what transpired during some very dark days in her past. In this second film version of William Faulkner's "Sanctuary" after The Story of Temple Drake [with parts of Faulkner's sequel, "Requiem for a Nun" thrown into the mix], Temple again winds up at a bootlegger's hide-out, is raped by "Candy Man" (Yves Montand) and taken to a whorehouse, but eventually winds up married to straight arrow Gowan Stevens (Bradford Dillman), whereupon she hires old associate Nancy to look after her children. Sanctuary idiotically tries to convince the viewer that somehow her infant's murder is all her fault, which is so morally moronic it isn't funny. And that isn't the only problem with the movie. Montand is screamingly miscast as the rapist ["Wanna dwink?" he asks Dillman in one hilarious scene], and although Remick has given some nice performances elsewhere, she is defeated by the sheer stupidity of James Poe's screenplay. Ironically Sanctuary emerges as more dated than The Story of Temple Drake because in this version Temple falls in love with her rapist, an odious notion that even soap operas finally began to reject in recent years. [Yes, one could argue that it's really sexual obsession, and Temple is not normal, but it's still offensive.] Dillman gives one of his "I'm not really sure what I'm doing here" performances; Harry Townes is notable as Nancy's lawyer, Ira; and Reta Shaw is fun as the painted madame of a brothel. Folksinger Odetta isn't a seasoned enough actress to make much of an impression as Nancy, but her part is so unbelievable it would tax the talents of an experienced acting genius. This very stupid movie seems to forget that there is never any justification for taking the life of an innocent child. The phony quasi-religious ending may have you screaming at the TV. In black and white CinemaScope.

Verdict: Looks like "fun," but isn't. *1/2.

THE WAGES OF FEAR

Yves Montand

THE WAGES OF FEAR aka La salaire de la peur/1953). Director: Henri-Georges Clouzot.

"If I'm going to be a corpse, I want to be presentable."

"Just takes a few months to get to be a hundred."

In a grubby, hopeless town in South America, four desperate men agree to drive two trucks loaded with nitroglycerin over rough terrain to deliver to a fiery oil well for a great deal of money. The two main characters are Mario (Yves Montand) and his fellow Frenchman, Jo (Charles Vanel), with whom he strikes up an affectionate father/son friendship which is sorely tested and pretty much defeated by their ordeal. In the second truck are Mario's former friend, Luigi (Folco Lulli) and Bimba (Peter van Eyck). What sets this movie apart from its Hollywood remake, William Friedkin's Sorcerer, is the intense, more dimensional characterization that has you caring what happens to these not always likable individuals. The Hollywood version is also afflicted with "Indiana Jones" fever in which the situations the drivers and trucks find themselves in are sometimes like something out of a cliffhanger, while Clouzot manages to generate suspense over more reasonable travails. The acting is excellent, with Vanel in particular etching a memorably superb portrait of a tough guy who has to deal with thoughts of age and fear as the taut and terrifying journey continues, but the others are also marvelous. Luis De Lima, Vera Clouzot, and William Tubbs also register as another wannabe driver, Mario's sometime girlfriend, and the supervisor in the oil company who's much more concerned with the nitro getting through than he is about human lives. The Wages of Fear is imperfect and overlong and builds slowly [although there are tense scenes even in the first half hour, such as a confrontation between Jo and Luigi in a tavern] but it is arresting and moving. At one point Mario allows his desperation and exasperatioin with Jo to go too far, but in a very satisfactory conclusion it all comes full circle. Clouzot also directed Le Corbeau.

Verdict: A classic French film well worth the viewing. ***1/2.