Suzy Delair as Marguerite Martineau aka Jenny Lamour

Bernard Blier as Maurice Martineau

Louis Jouvet as Inspector Antoine

Simone Renant as Dora Monier

Directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot

Elevated in France to the venerable status that Casablanca enjoys in the United States, this little gem of a film captures the saucy French spirit in spades. Rarely seen outside of France, a new restoration from Rialto Pictures showcases director Henri-Georges Clouzet's bittersweet outlook, and the luminous black and white cinematography shines. From the rain slicked early morning streets of Paris to the final scene on a snowy Christmas morning, one can feel the chill in the air. The dusky warmth of the bawdy music hall mirrors reflecting the standing room crowd shimmers with a gentle radiance. This is one of those films that, when dissected, adds up to be greater than the sum of its parts.

As Jenny Lamour sings in her audacious musical number, what's needed in love is not mere beauty, but tra-la-la-la. Jenny herself is a near-beauty, but more than makes up what's lacking with her playful flirtations. She wants to get ahead and is not choosy about her methods. Although devoted to her jealous husband, Maurice, her brazen ambition makes him crazy, and therein sets the scene that gets them both mixed up in mayhem and murder. If the French wrote the book on glamour and naughty double entendre, Quai des Ofevres delivers both and pulls them together nicely with a generous slice of American style film noir thrown in for good measure.

The most complex character in this very capable ensemble piece is police Detective Antoine (Louis Jouvet), too smart for his station but not good looking enough for promotion, instead he must go around cleaning up the usual and unusual messes that others leave behind. Lovely and a bit androgynous, Dora is a photographer. She is the childhood friend of Maurice and the unrequited lover of Jenny. She longs for something always just out of her grasp. She makes a living with routine photography and occasionally accepts a more distasteful sort of work from rich, repulsive Monsieur Brignon and the street girls he brings around to be photographed. When he offers Jenny an opportunity to discuss a possible part in a film, Jenny accepts his attentions; sure that she can keep the lecherous old man at bay.

Class issues and the fresh psychic wounds and deprivations of wartime boil very near the surface, providing a rich context for Parisian life among these ordinary folks, who inhabit the post war city, and coincidentally provide an insight into Jenny's motivation to encourage Brignon, and perhaps Maurice' jealousy as well.

Clouzet (Diabolique, Wages of Fear) tossed off the picture as a vehicle for his star and lover, Suzy Delair. Before and during the war, he had been criticized and virtually blacklisted in film for what was seen as anti-French sentiment and for his writing on Le Corbeau. Quai des orfevres served as his comeback and was an instant success. It is one of the few films in France that has enjoyed non-stop revivals in its 55-year life. With fare like this at the cinema, one can see why the generation of new wave directors that followed, on both sides of the Atlantic, spent all their spare time in adolescence at the movies. Quai is steeped in the rich tradition and atmosphere of movie making with a French flair. For instance, Dora's undisguised sexual desire for Jenny is something that would have been impossible in a Hollywood film at the time.

The dominance of Hollywood romances can sometimes make one forget that the classic blend of love, and jealous and sexy suggestiveness are synonymous with the sexy French. Though not a Christmas movie in the traditional sense, this treat smacks infinitely more of ambiguous holiday spirit than the spate of phony, heartwarming cliché fare that pops up at this time of year.