Panic
Panique
Julien Duvivier
© Les Acacias
Mr Hire is a strange and lonely man. He is madly in love with the beautiful Alice but keeps his secret deep inside him. When a crime is committed in his neighbourhood, the neighbours and police soon suspect him. The real murderer is none other than Alice’s young lover, but Hire, who could provide the proof, refrains from doing so out of love for Alice. Alice, using her influence, does everything in her power to ensure that her singular suitor is accused. The unfortunate man is harassed by the police and soon hunted down by the mob...
Cast : Viviane Romance, Michel Simon, Max Dalban, Émile Drain, Guy Favières, Louis Florencie
Screenplay : Charles Spaak, Julien Duvivier
Cinematography : Nicolas Hayer
Sound : Joseph de Bretagne
Editing : Marthe Poncin
Music : Jean Wiener
Screenplay : Charles Spaak, Julien Duvivier
Cinematography : Nicolas Hayer
Sound : Joseph de Bretagne
Editing : Marthe Poncin
Music : Jean Wiener
Production : Filmsonor
Distribution : Les Acacias
Distribution : Les Acacias
The first post-war film made in France by Julien Duvivier, Panique (Panic) proved to be a complicated comeback for the director, failing both critically and with audiences. Yet all the elements of poetic realism that made Duvivier such a success before the war were present in the film, with its cheeky-chappy working-class setting, a certain fairytale dimension in the use of the realistic, yet fake, decor of the nearby funfair, and the magnificent, cursed character of Monsieur Hire. Whereas, despite its dark impulses (or positivism for the period of the Front Populaire), the genre exalted noble values and a certain romanticism, Duvivier reverses the theme here with this incredibly harsh and disillusioned film about human nature, in which he freely adapts Georges Simenon’s Les Fiançailles de M. Hire. Right from the opening scene, Duvivier isolates his strange Monsieur Hire from the rest of the population, using a clever zoom as the camera sweeps over the urban landscape of this small neighbourhood. The symbolism is reinforced a few scenes later on a dodgem ride where all the participants pick on him for no reason. (Justin Kwedi; dvdclassik.com)