Garde à Vue [The Inquisitor] **** (1981, Lino Ventura, Michel Serrault, Romy Schneider, Guy Marchand) – Classic Movie Review 3703

Co-writer/ director Claude Miller’s satisfying 1981 French police thriller is neatly done, atmospheric, gripping and very dark. It won four French César Awards in 1982 – Best Actor (Michel Serrault), Best Supporting Actor (Guy Marchand), Best Screenplay and Best Editing.

Michel Serrault stars as Emile Martinaud, a rich, vain provincial lawyer who is being questioned by two cops, Inspector Antoine Gallien (Lino Ventura) and Inspector Marcel Belmont (Guy Marchand), about the rape and murder of little girls. Romy Schneider (in her penultimate role before her death at 43 from cardiac arrest on May 29 1982) plays Martinaud’s wife, Chantal.

The clever and surprising, if slightly wordy, screenplay by Miller, Jean Herman and Michel Audiard is based on a British novel, Brainwash, by John Wainwright.

However, it is the inspired acting of the four principals that turns a liberal-minded, intelligent story into a really special film.

Remade as Under Suspicion (2000) Gene Hackman as Henry Hearst, a smug lawyer in a bad toupee, who is suspected of a girl’s murder, and becomes involved in a series of mind games with the investigating officer, Captain Victor Benezet (Morgan Freeman).

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 3703

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