Le Meurtrier [Enough Rope] **** (1963, Gert Fröbe, Maurice Ronet, Yvonne Furneaux, Marina Vlady, Robert Hossein) – Classic Movie Review 12,242

Gert Fröbe and Maurice Ronet star in the stylish 1963 French thriller film Le Meurtrier [Enough Rope], based on Patricia Highsmith’s 1954 novel The Blunderer. Its director Claude Autant-Lara said: ‘If a film does not have venom, it is worthless’.

Director Claude Autant-Lara’s 1963 French thriller film Le Meurtrier [Enough Rope] is an extremely stylish, very satisfying and thoroughly enjoyable black and white widescreen adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s 1954 novel The Blunderer, the third of her 22 novels.

Gert Fröbe stars in a fussy but effective performance as creepy Melchior Kimmel, the bookselling, wife murderer of the title, and Maurice Ronet plays rich architect Walter Saccard, a man who wanted to kill his neurotic, insanely jealous wife Clara (Yvonne Furneaux), driving him into the arms of younger Ellie (Marina Vlady).

Walter Saccard and Melchior Kimmel are both suspected for the murder of their wives and set out to try to prove their innocence, when a dogged, violent police detective, Corbi (Robert Hossein) starts pestering and harassing them. The two strangers also suspect each other of murdering their own wives.

Ronet underplays, like he does as Dickie in his previous visit to Highsmith country, Plein Soleil, providing an intense, tightly sprung foil to Fröbe’s act as the short-sighted crazy killer. Fröbe’s performance is rich and ripe, recalling Emil Jannings, really rather amusing in the old style. It is miles away from his Goldfinger character the following year (1964). The handsome Hossein is strong as the nasty cop, and the lovely Furneaux is impressive as crazy Clara. The pretty Vlady plays her cypher of a character for what it is worth. The casting is good, and so is the acting.

René Cloërec’s nerve-jangling score is a success, Jacques Natteau’s cinematography is inventive and imaginative, moving the camera around smartly, and the exterior filming is inventive. It’s clearly aged well and is a lovely period piece now, looking a perfect style object. The black and white widescreen really works well for it, and there are lots of beautiful period artefacts to relish, phones, cars and buses etc. Above all Highsmith’s dark and nasty twin murder story is working well on screen here. It does not hold back from showing murder most foul – starting off with Kimmel’s killing of his wife – or showing the sadistic violence of the semi-psychopathic cop, directed at the evil but pathetic Kimmel character. So let us praise the smooth screenplay of Jean Aurenche and Pierre Bost, and the slick direction of Claude Autant-Lara. It is all very exciting, and disturbing.

Walter, by the way, is The Blunderer of the title. His blundering threatens his relationships, his reputation and his life.

It is remade as A Kind of Murder (2016).

The cast are Gert Fröbe as Melchior Kimmel, Maurice Ronet as Walter Saccard, Robert Hossein as Corbi, Marina Vlady as Ellie, Yvonne Furneaux as Clara, Paulette Dubost as Mme Kimmel, Laurence Badie as the servant, and Clara Gansard as Claudia.

The film was released in France on 11 January 1963 as Le Meurtrier and in West Germany on 13 February 1963 as Der Mörder.

The dogged police detective in this movie was the inspiration for Columbo.

The films of the works of Patricia Highsmith: Strangers on a Train (1951), Plein Soleil [Purple Noon] (1960), Enough Rope (1963), The American Friend (1977), This Sweet Sickness (1977), A Dog’s Ransom (1978), The Glass Cell (1978), The Cry of the Owl (1987), The Story Teller (1989), The Talented Mr Ripley (1999), Ripley’s Game (2002), Ripley Under Ground (2005), The Cry of the Owl (2009), The Two Faces of January (2014), Carol (2015), A Kind of Murder (2016), and Deep Water (2022).

Claude Autant-Lara (5 August 1901 – 5 February 2000): ‘If a film does not have venom, it is worthless’.

The French New Wave movement rejected him in the 1960s, ending his popular success. On 18 June 1989, he was elected as a member of the National Front to the European Parliament, its oldest member.

© Derek Winnert 2022 Classic Movie Review 12,242

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