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| Images courtesy of Radiance Films |
The same year he acted in the American blacklisted filmmaker
Jules Dassin’s 1955 French crime drama Rififi, French actor Robert
Hossein made his directorial debut with The Wicked Go to Hell starring
Serge Reggiani and Henri Vidal. While is
acting and directing career remained prolific throughout the 2000s with a
gradual foray into television work, the actor/director’s hybrid highlights in
front of and behind the camera ranging between 1955 and 1961 have been curated
here together by Radiance Films in the aptly named Wicked Games triptych
of film noir pictures. Making their
English subtitled debuts outside of France for the first time, the films range
from a prison escape drama The Wicked Go to Hell, a dueling femme fatale
whodunit with Nude in a White Car and lastly a scope widescreen western
with The Taste of Violence. With
all three films restored in 2K by Gaumont Films along with numerous video essays
and a collectible booklet with essays by Walter Chaw and Lucas Balbo, Wicked
Games is a splendid introductory chapter to the late multitalented film
worker’s library.
In the first film The Wicked Go to Hell from 1955, the saga begins as a tense labyrinthine prison escape film adapted from crime novelist Frédéric Dard’s text starring Serge Reggiani as Rudel and Henri Vidal as Pierre that gradually shifts into a home invasion thriller/character study drama involving Eva (Marina Vlady) a young female muse of an artist living on the isolated beachfront they murder before taking her hostage. One of them is badly injured from a gunshot wound in the leg and with a nationwide manhunt on the loose for the daring prison escape, they decide to hold up while Rudel recuperates. The boorish surly Pierre tries more than once to assert his dominance and manhood with unflattering come-ons before making a move on Eva, sparking conflict between the two escapees over the fate of the woman who herself is cunning and sneakily trying to lure the unwanted fugitive duo into a pit of quicksand.
In the first film The Wicked Go to Hell from 1955, the saga begins as a tense labyrinthine prison escape film adapted from crime novelist Frédéric Dard’s text starring Serge Reggiani as Rudel and Henri Vidal as Pierre that gradually shifts into a home invasion thriller/character study drama involving Eva (Marina Vlady) a young female muse of an artist living on the isolated beachfront they murder before taking her hostage. One of them is badly injured from a gunshot wound in the leg and with a nationwide manhunt on the loose for the daring prison escape, they decide to hold up while Rudel recuperates. The boorish surly Pierre tries more than once to assert his dominance and manhood with unflattering come-ons before making a move on Eva, sparking conflict between the two escapees over the fate of the woman who herself is cunning and sneakily trying to lure the unwanted fugitive duo into a pit of quicksand.
Shot in mannered and stately 1.33:1 Academy format by French Cancan cinematographer Michel Kelber and underscored by a moody composition by André Hossein who also went on to score Nude in a White Car and The Taste of Violence, from the opening shot of a prison guard tower as mechanized humans form in lines to the closing vistas of the escapees fighting on the beach over an impossibly beautiful woman, the audiovisual landscape of The Wicked Go to Hell reflects the shifting structure and nature of the film. Much like the eventual American/Russian action thriller Runaway Train, it begins as a prison escape film that becomes something else once a woman becomes involved. All three of the key performances are top notch with Serge Reggiani being one of the all-time screen greats including but not limited to his legendary screen turn in The Leopard. Henri Vidal is also great as the adversarial alpha male prisoner though tragically he’d pass away just a few years after doing this film. Marina Vlady achieved something of a sex symbol and is given full reign to not only strut about the screen usually barefoot on the sand, but more often than not she weaponizes her sexuality in order to outwit her captors. At one point she even fends off authorities and prevents a violent shootout from ensuing, colluding just enough to save her skin while also leaving room for her to figure out how to take these guys out.
The next film made in 1959 Blonde in a White Car aka Nude in a White Car once again draws from Frédéric Dard’s novel C'est toi le venin… and reunites actor/writer/director Hossein with Marina Vlady and André Hossein though switching cinematographers with Forbidden Games cameraman Robert Juillard and opens the screen space to 1.66:1. Starring Hossein himself in the lead role as Pierre an unemployed actor, the conflict arises when a naked woman in a car tries to seduce and murder him. Narrowly escaping death, he traces the car back to a secluded mansion presided over by polio stricken wheelchair bound Eva (Marina Vlady) and her sister Hélène (Odile Versois). Drifting in and out of affairs with both women, the mansion itself like Mill of the Stone Women or Kill, Baby, Kill becomes a remote haven for psychosexual manipulation and competing sisterhood over the unlikely man ensnared in their codependent spider web of deceit and seduction. More of a mercurial whodunit with emphasis on sexual intrigue and mystery, it deals in similar terrain as Hossein’s previous work with Frédéric Dard with respect to power dynamics and female agency. Of the films presented here it is rather daring for including topless nudity in 1959 and further cements Hossein as a confident genre filmmaker with just a hint of provocateur.
Lastly and perhaps most curiously is 1961’s Dyaliscope 2.35:1 widescreen precursor to what would or wouldn’t become the spaghetti western with The Taste of Violence also once again starring Hossein in the lead role. Set amid a fictional revolution in Latin America under a brutal dictatorship, guerilla warfare leader Perez (Hossein) with his cronies proceeds to hold up a train and kidnap the dictator’s daughter Maria (Giovanna Ralli) as a bargaining chip to free imprisoned revolutionaries. Alongside Chamaco (Mario Adorf) and Chico (Hans H. Neubert), they embark on a sojourn across the barren desert landscapes only for preexisting tensions between the men to arise over Maria who not unlike the heroine of The Wicked Go to Hell is resourceful and knows how to handle a gun and at one point gets the better of her captors. As with that film, it becomes a study of how criminal or mercenary quests or crusades are almost always upended when a woman comes into the picture and invariably drives a wedge between the collaborating guerilla fighters.
Once again working with composer André Hossein and lensed in panoramic widescreen by Diabolique camera operator Jacques Robin, Hossein’s take on the western film bears all the hallmarks of what would evolve into the Italian film industry’s take on the western while continuing in the themes of ideological sin and redemption of his earlier works mixed with strong female characters, The Taste of Violence is an excellent unlikely closure to the Wicked Games box. Featuring a strong committed performance from Giovanna Ralli as the tough independent heroine who develops feelings for her initial captor turned comrade Perez played brilliantly by director/actor Hossein and adored with scenic vistas of deserted landscapes and beachfronts, it is a proto-spaghetti western with all the noir trademarks and leitmotifs of the first two films in the Wicked Games set.
With all three films restored in 2K by Gaumont separated across three discs, the films feature a running audio commentary by Tim Lucas, making-of featurettes, newly created video essays and interviews with key cast members including actress Marina Vlady and a collector’s booklet by Walter Chaw (my favorite contemporary film critic by the way), Radiance Films’ Wicked Games set is another wonderful addition to the French crime cinema filmmaker’s oeuvre highlighting his talents in front of and behind the camera. Making their English language premiere and including translated archival writings by Lucas Balbo, the films come housed with reversible sleeve art in a hard bound box replete with the time-honored OBI spine included. As a newcomer to Hossein having recently watched him in the Jules Dassin classic Rififi, these were a remarkable trilogy of films and hopefully in the near future Radiance has the good sense to license more titles from this tragically underrated master.
--Andrew Kotwicki