Inspector Maigret [Maigret tend un piège] [Maigret Sets a Trap] **** (1958, Jean Gabin, Annie Girardot, Olivier Hussenot, Jeanne Boitel, André Valmy, Lino Ventura, Jean Desailly) – Classic Movie Review 9543

Jean Gabin gives a tremendous performance as Georges Simenon’s famed pipe-smoking police inspector Maigret, investigating Jack the Ripper-type knife-murders of women in Paris’s seedy Montmartre.

Director Jean Delannoy’s extremely satisfying, top-level 1958 French police thriller Inspector Maigret [Maigret tend un piège] [Maigret Sets a Trap] stars as Inspector Jules Maigret an ideally cast Jean Gabin, who gives an excellent performance as Georges Simenon’s famed pipe-smoking police inspector, who is called in to investigate four Jack the Ripper-type knife-murders of women in Paris’s seedy district of Montmartre.

Olivier Hussenot plays Inspector Lagrume, who thinks he has found the killer in local butcher Emile Barberot (Alfred Adam), but Maigret thinks otherwise. Maigret’s tactic’s are less than squeaky clean. Unable to find the killer, Maigret arrests a man for the murders and tells the press the story, even though he knows he isn’t the killer, to try to flush the real, apparently vain and prideful killer out of hiding. Dangerously, Maigret also sets a trap for a serial killer, getting local girls of similar size and shape to walk the streets, hoping to lure the killer into making a mistake.

Not only is this an exciting, intense, gripping all-action crime mystery thriller, with a very modern-seeming serial-killer theme and some up-to-date sexual frankness, but it is also an intriguing study of character and place, both rich and strange. It is beautifully and imaginatively filmed by cinematographer Louis Page at the Epinay Studios in Paris on sets designed by René Renoux, and on location around Paris. Paul Misraki’s score add a lot to the mood and atmosphere.

Gabin seemingly effortlessly dominates in a quietly busy, fussy, attractive star performance. A canny tour-de-force, it is warm and icy by turns. Actually for all his charm (and for being on the right side of the law), Maigret is a rather unpleasant character. He pokes, he probes and he provokes. You know he’ll get his man, but how? and who? There are enough oddball characters, and twists and turns in the clever, complex plot to keep audiences guessing right to the end.

If Gabin’s performance dominates the movie, there is a clutch of wonderful performances to support him: Jean Desailly is also outstanding as the twitchy, perhaps over-twitchy mother-dominated murder suspect Marcel Maurin, Annie Girardot is quietly commanding as his mysterious, straying wife wife Yvonne Maurin, Jeanne Boitel is impressive as faithful Madame Maigret, André Valmy is strong as the loyal Inspecteur Lucas, Lino Ventura is valuable as Inspecteur Torrence, and, above all, Lucienne Bogaert is splendidly chilly as the mother, Madame Maurin.

It is written by Jean Delannoy, Rodolphe-Maurice Arlaud and Michel Audiard, adapting the 1955 novel Maigret Sets a Trap [Maigret tend un piège] by Belgian writer Georges Simenon.

Also in the cast are Annie Girardot, Jean Desailly, Olivier Hussenot, Alfred Adam, Lino Ventura, Jeanne Boitel, Lucienne Bogaert, Jean Debucourt, Guy Decomble, Paulette Dubost, Gérard Sety, Jacques Hilling, Jean Tissier, André Valmy, Maryse Paillet, Daniel Emilfork, Geymond Vital, Hubert de Lapparent and Nadine Basile.

It was re-released in the US as Woman Bait.

Gabin played Simenon’s detective Jules Maigret in three films in 1958, 1959 and 1963. It is followed by Maigret et l’Affaire Saint-Fiacre [Maigret and the St Fiacre Case] (1959), also directed by Delannoy, and Maigret voit rouge (1963). Gabin also made Le Baron de l’écluse [The Baron of the Locks], another adaptation of a novel by Georges Simenon, with Delannoy, and The President, another adaptation of a novel by Georges Simenon, with director Henri Verneuil.

Inspector Maigret [Maigret tend un piège] [Maigret Sets a Trap] is directed by Jean Delannoy, runs 119 minutes, is made by Intermondia Films and Jolly Film, is released by Rank (UK) and Lopert (US), is written by Rodolphe-Maurice Arlaud (adaptation), Michel Audiard (adaptation and dialogue) and Jean Delannoy (adaptation), based on the novel by Georges Simenon, is shot in black and white by Louis Page, is produced by Jean-Paul Guibert, is scored by Paul Misraki and is designed by René Renoux.

The cast are Jean Gabin as Jules Maigret, Annie Girardot as Yvonne Maurin, Jean Desailly as Marcel Maurin, Olivier Hussenot as Lagrume, Jeanne Boitel as Louise Maigret, Lucienne Bogaert as Mme Veuve Adèle Maurin, Jean Debucourt as Camille Guimard, Guy Decomble as Mazet, Paulette Dubost as Mauricette Barberot, Jacques Hilling as Le médecin légiste, Hubert de Lapparent as Le juge Coméliau, Gérard Séty as Georges “Jojo” Vacher, Lino Ventura as Inspector Torrence, André Valmy as Inspector Lucas, and Nadine Basile as L’assistante de police.

It has been remade for TV at least five times, in 1962 (an episode of the 1960s BBC television series Maigret with Rupert Davies as Maigret), in 1992 (an episode of the 1992 ITV television series Maigret with Michael Gambon as Maigret), in 1996 (in France, with Bruno Cremer, who played Maigret in 54 adaptations from 1991 to 2005), in 2004 and in 2016 (an episode of ITV’s television series Maigret with Rowan Atkinson as Maigret).

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 9543

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