Le Chat [The Cat] **** (1971, Jean Gabin, Simone Signoret, Annie Cordy, Jacques Rispal, Nicole Desailly) – Classic Movie Review 5552

Co-writer/ director Pierre Granier-Deferre’s compelling and disturbing 1971 film adaptation of a novel by Georges Simenon about a late middle-aged Parisian couple’s troubled, angst-ridden domestic life, which is characterised by a shared disgust and the husband’s retreat into adoring the cat, which becomes the object of the wife’s anger.

The film is a fantastic miniaturist character study, and quietly devastating development of a destructive love-hate relationship, with virtually no events for the actors to perform or even lines for them to speak, as the couple, Julien and Clémence Bouin, hardly talk to each other.

But Jean Gabin and Simone Signoret, tremendous together, are up to the challenge, and deservedly won Best Actor and Best Actress awards for their outstanding performances at the 1971 Berlin Film Festival.

The film could perhaps have been excruciating in other hands, but here it is riveting.

Granier-Deferre re-convened with Signoret for another Georges Simenon adaptation, The Widow Couderc [La veuve Couderc], the same year.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 5552

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