Return from the Ashes - 1965 film review

I've mentioned the French crime novelist Hubert Monteilhet several times on this blog. Along with Boileau and Narcejac, Sebastien Japrisot, Catherine Arley and Robert Thomas, he took the post-war French story of suspense in fresh directions, and like those other writers, his work proved eminently filmable. Thanks to Sergio of that excellent blog Tipping My Fedora, I've become aware of two films of his book.Return from the Ashes. One was Phoenix, which I reviewed earlier this year and which updates the story in a very radical way. The other dates from 1965 and is rather more faithful to the original.

J. Lee Thompson does, I think, a pretty good job of turning the book into a dark and brooding movie with music by John Dankworth. The excellent cast is extremely well differentiated. Ingrid Thulin, a gifted actor who made a great impression on me many years ago in Bergman's well-regarded if rather depressing Cries and Whispers, plays the part of Michele, a very attractive and very rich widow who is also a successful doctor. Unfortunately, she falls for a good for nothing chess player (Maximilian Schell). They marry, but Michele is immediately arrested by the Nazis, and is thought to have died during the war.

In fact, she has survived the horrors of Dachau, but when she comes back home she finds that Stan, the chess-playing husband, has begun an affair with Fabi, her step-daughter, who hates her. Various complications ensue, but despite the warning words of her long-term admirer Charles (the splendid Herbert Lom) Michele remains devoted to Stan. But then Fabi tries to persuade Stan to murder Michele, so that they can be together forever, with the benefit of Michele's fortune....

I really enjoyed this one, and I'm glad that Sergio directed my attention to it. The film provides a good example of French domestic suspense, which I think has a highly distinctive flavour. The music contributes to the mood, and the acting is so good that the highly melodramatic plot seems not too implausible. It's a real shame that Monteilhet and his work are not better known in this country.

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Forgotten Book - Praying Mantis

My latest entry for Patti Abbott’s series of Forgotten Books is Praying Mantis, by Hubert Monteilhet. I’ve never heard anyone discuss the novel, even though it is a brilliant example of Eurocrime (but from a period when Eurocrime was distinctly unfashionable.) But I became aware of it back in 1982, when it was (I think) the very first film made specifically for Channel Four Television. It starred Cherie Lunghi and Jonathan Pryce and I thought it first-rate. Ever since, I’ve been trying to track down a copy, and a few weeks ago, I finally saw one in Jamie Sturgeon’s latest catalogue.

The novel was published in 1962, and it was Montheilet’s debut – and a brilliant one too. I’ve read one other of Monteilhet’s books, the excellent Return from the Ashes, and he seems to me to be good enough to be bracketed with those masters of suspense Boileau and Narcejac. Catherine Arley and the better known Sebastian Japrisot were other authors of the same era who worked in much the same territory.

The story is clever and compelling. A professor called Paul Canova takes out an extremely valuable insurance policy benefiting his wife. When his wife dies, he re-marries a beautiful but heartless woman, but before long he has an affair with a young student called Beatrice. Beatrice marries one of her teachers, Magny. But Magny has become embroiled with the second Madame Canova….

The telling of the tale is ingeniously handled – it’s done by extracts from letters, a diary, a tape recording and so on. Beatrice soon uncovers a cunning murder plot, but before long the reader is thrown into confusion about who is plotting against whom. Definitely a book that deserves to be better known.