Docteur Petiot [Dr Petiot] **** (1990, Michel Serrault, Pierre Romans, Bérangère Bonvoisin) – Classic Movie Review 8732

This 1990 biographical crime drama film Dr Petiot is directed with immense vigour and confidence by director Christian de Chalonge, who conjures up stylised and beautifully photographed images, lensed by cinematographer Patrick Blossier.

The intense and imaginative screenplay by Christian de Chalonge and Dominique Garnier tells the extraordinary true-life story of Dr Marcel Petiot, a serial killer in Nazi-occupied Paris, who is played with great panache as a Nosferatu figure by the admirable Michel Serrault in a splendidly creepy tour-de-force.

Dr Petiot is a highly disturbing, unusual and distinguished film, and is recommended to collectors of the bizarre. The theme and sympathetic portrait of the killer bring it into the same controversial territory as The Silence of the Lambs, but it is more complex and more subtle, and no less exciting as a chiller. He was supposed to be helping his rich Jewish patients escape from occupied France to Spain, but drugged them, burnt their bodies and stole their goods.

Also in the cast are Pierre Romans, Zbigniew Horoks, Bérangère Bonvoisin, Aurore Prieto and André Chaumeau.

Dr Petiot is directed by Christian de Chalonge, runs 102 minutes, is made by MS Productions, Sara Films and Ciné Cinq, is released by Acteurs Auteurs Associés (AAA) (1990) (France) and Aries Films (1990) (US) (subtitled), is written by Dominique Garnier and Christian de Chalonge, is shot by Patrick Blossier, is produced by Alain Sarde and Philipe Chapelier-Dehesdin and is scored by Michel Portal.

© Derek Winnert 2019 Classic Movie Review 8732

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