Quai des Orfevres (1947)

 Henri-Georges Clouzot's "Quai des Orfevres"

1947's "Quai des Orfevres" was Henri-Georges Clouzot's first directorial effort after his controversial 1943 film "Le Corbeau." Clouzot had been banned from filmmaking by the French government for his collaboration with a German film studio financing "Le Corbeau." However, many didn't quite make the thematic connections with "Le Corbeau"'s anti-Nazi sentiment and felt that the film was critiquing France itself. One Clouzot's ban was lifted, he decided to adapt Stanislas-Andre Steeman's 1942 novel "L'egitime defense." 

Clouzot's film focuses on a married couple, Maurice Martineau and his theater performing wife, Jenny Lamour. After Jenny becomes acquainted with a sleazy businessman, Brignon, who promises her a film deal, the jealous Maurice goes to Brignon's home to kill him only to find him already dead. A police procedure initiated and Maurice feels the presence of the law closing in around him.  

The inspector of this police investigation was played by iconic French film actor Louis Jouvet in his last truly great role before his death in 1951. He and Clouzot had become great friends during the Nazi occupation at a time when Clouzot was blacklisted. With this collaboration, they created a film that would become a huge commercial and critical success in France, thereby reestablishing Clouzot as a prominent film director.

On top of being a great police procedural that captivated general commercial audiences, many film critics noted the great interplay between lower class social struggles and criminality in a post-war France. Despite Clouzot writing the film purely from the memory of the novel he was basing on, he was still able to make a film that had a novel-esque quality that critics and audiences gravitated toward. The film unravels the struggles of modern French society and their desire for better circumstances.