Panique (1946)

 Julien Duvivier's "Panique"

The final film I will be watching in the filmography of French filmmaker Julien Duvivier is his post-war 1946 film "Panique." I've got to say that I was completely enthralled with his picture and felt that Duvivier had reached the pinnacle of his creative peaks. That is to say, however, that it is not my personal favorite of Duvivier. But, I do think that "Panique" is perhaps his most interesting, his most explorative, and the bleakest film of his career.

"Panique" centers on a young woman named Alice fresh from jail for taking the rap for a crime committed by her lover, Alfred. She then discovers that he has broken the law once again, this time more serious. After a botched holdup, Alfred brutally murdered an elderly woman. The only thing standing in their way from escaping the murder is town outcast, Monsieur Hire, who thinks he's trying to save Alice from Alfred by telling her he has proof of the murder. However, Alice uses seduction to try and trick Monsieur Hire and plants evidence in his apartment. Once the townspeople begin to suspect Monsieur Hire to be the killer, they go into a crazed frenzy after storming his apartment and finding said evidence. This frenzy leads Monsieur Hire to his ultimate demise.

The thing that really stuck out to be about this film the most was how much Duvivier seemed like he was attempting to make a Fritz Lang film. All of the elements were there, including the visual imagery at play. I felt like the film was a messy mélange of "M," "Fury" and "Scarlet Street." And with the Lang elements also comes the bleakness of the picture. All of the film's characters somehow manage to be at their worst and believing the worst about each other. Alfred, for one, was a murderous criminal. Alice was his accomplice and she framed an innocent man for murder and essentially put him to death. The frenzied crowd assumed guilt to this innocent man as well and even drove him to death. Even the innocent man was not entirely innocent, as he had been looking at Alice through her window, stalking her, and did not even turn Alfred in. Rather, he used his evidence against Alfred to try and pry Alice away from him. All in all, every single person had bad intentions and acted on those bad intentions. 

With this, Duvivier paints a society full of anger, paranoia, and vehemently ready to turn on each other. It is a completely bleak outlook of a French society relatively fresh from the clutches of war and Nazi occupation. The film has been described by Michael Witt and Michael Temple in their 2004 novel "The French Cinema Book" as, "a strong and memorable screen denunciation of the relations between French people in the confused aftermath of the war" and "a harsh but thoughtfully delineated portrait of a society riven by mistrust and suspicion." Duvivier's take on the French society post-war was an incredibly bleak one, believing that the war and occupation had turned many French people untrusting and cynical. As Duvivier himself noted with respect to the film, that "we are far from a people who love each other."

There were many in the French community who took offense to this portrayal. After the film's release, many defenders of French society felt that Duvivier's exile to the United States during the war had not granted him the insight into French society during the war enough for him to comment on it. Because he was not actively engaged and amongst those who felt the fear and paranoia under the Nazi occupation, many felt that he was unfit to make any such assessment. 

Despite this, I feel as though Duviver has every right to criticize not only the French society from which he was a part of, but also the very essence of the human spirit, especially after the trauma of the war. "Panique" creates that dark and bleak outlook on how we view and treat each other, as well as the lengths we will go to turn on each other and tear each other apart.