Classic French Noir: Gender and the Cinema of Fatal Desire

The specificity of film noir as a particular type of crime drama with a particular optique is made clearer by a brief comparison with its non-noir counterpart within the sub-genre of the police procedural. In conventional and ‘light’ polars (which form the bulk of French production), the good is unproblematically aligned with the male investigator as protagonist-hero, usually an official representative of the law, and whose resolution of the crime results in positive narrative closure.¹ In the early 1950s the polar was dominated by the massively popular American-influenced, action-adventure series featuring super-spy Lemmy Caution (starring American Eddie Constantine) and (to a lesser extent) home-grown reporter-investigator Georges Masse (Raymond Rouleau), who spent their time busting international crime rings in often exotic locations, ‘taming’ bevies of blonde bombshells into the bargain.²

no longer a genius of detection invulnerable to attack and far superior to his enemies. Rather, he is pitched into the very action of the novel, often disorientated and caught up in a whirlwind of events over which he has little control.³

This chapter will focus on such male investigator figures as emblematic of the blurred moral boundaries that define the noir optique. We will investigate a range of police inspectors or commissaires, for the ways they in turn investigate and/or become romantically involved with potentially dangerous, often criminal or criminalised females. I will extend biocultural arguments around concepts of male and female attractiveness, pair-bonding and jealous sexual rivalry, examining how gendered interactions play out in a patriarchal society on the cusp of sexual revolution.

In dark polars, honest cops may be involved in solving crimes crapuleux (sordid crimes) in seedy milieus that pull the narrative in a noir direction.⁴ Such is the case with number one grossing French polar of the classic period, Quai des Orfèvres [Jenny Lamour] (1947) (box office: 5,544,721; 7th/71), a triumphant comeback for disgraced director H.G. Clouzot. The film’s dark semi-documentary evocation of the criminal investigation branch of the French police, metonymically represented by its headquarters on the Quai des Orfèvres, inevitably evokes the inseparability of violent crime and money (‘orfèvres’ means gold merchants). The plot centres on an honest, ordinary Frenchman (Bernard Blier) pulled into a vortex of lies, deceit and murder out of jealous passion for his flighty, coquettish music hall entertainer wife, Jenny Lamour (Suzy Delair). The couple and their attractive photographer friend Dora (Simone Renant), who is secretly in love with Jenny, are the principal suspects.

Not appearing until 40 minutes into the film, the film’s investigator, Inspecteur Antoine, brilliantly played by theatrical great Louis Jouvet, is nonetheless a central figure. A world-weary, eccentric and somewhat cynical outsider with close ties to his ‘clients’ (declaring they have taught him many of his professional skills), not above using force and blackmail in pursuit of justice, Antoine is nonetheless a sympathetic character.⁵ His protective side is shown by the fact that he is a caring solo parent, bringing up a young son, fruit of a mixed-race relationship (during time spent in the colonies) and whose mother presumably abandoned them both. Not unlike Chandler’s classic American private investigator (PI), Jouvet’s Antoine can walk the ‘mean streets’ of postwar Paris, ‘though he is not himself mean … a man of honor, by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it’.⁶

In Entre onze heures et minuit [Between Eleven and Midnight] (Decoin, 1949), Jouvet’s Commissaire Carrel goes undercover when he discovers he is the double of murdered gang boss and drug trafficker Vidauban. In the process of the investigation, a more romantic Jouvet falls for one of Vidauban’s mistresses, an elegant fashion designer (Madeleine Robinson) who names her fashion creations as if they were Série noire titles. Quickly realising he is not Vidauban, this classy dame clearly also has things to hide.

In the above films, Jouvet’s investigators are thus confronted with two potential femmes (Suzy Delair’s Jenny in Orfèvres and Madeleine Robinson’s fashion designer in Onze heures). Crucially, however, the threat they pose is quickly dissipated and no dangerous fatale figure emerges. In Orfèvres, Jenny’s jealous husband misreads her flirtatiousness and ambition as treachery but the film makes it clear early on that her emotional and sexual loyalties remain firmly with her husband. Both female leads are prepared to take the rap for the murder to save the one they love: Jenny to save Maurice; Dora to save Jenny. But in the end, the wily Antoine discovers the real murderer (a petty thief) and the film can end happily. While Jenny is no feminist heroine (she is vain and not very bright) nor is she a garce, and in my opinion the film is less misogynistic than some commentators claim.⁷ It is particularly notable for its sympathetic and non-stereotypical lesbian figure, Dora (Figure 9.1). Antoine’s melancholy parting remark to her reinforces audience sympathy for both: ‘You and I are alike. We never have any luck with women.’ Moreover, as Vincendeau notes, Orfèvres resembles many other postwar French noirs that ‘also point an accusing finger at male mediocrity and cowardice’.⁸

Figure 9.1 Quai des Orfèvres.

In Onze heures we soon realise the femme is in fact an innocent victim whom the crook has seduced in order to rob her. Thus when Jouvet’s Carrel discovers she is the murderer, rather than turn her in (as does Bogart’s cynical Sam Spade with The Maltese Falcon’s treacherous Brigitte O’Shaunessy) he sticks by her, resigning from his police job in order to both continue the relationship and better defend her. More like Chandler’s Marlowe than Hammett’s Spade, Jouvet’s investigator figure, in both films, but especially in Onze heures, is ‘not himself mean’ and above all ‘a man of honor’. Honour is less a case of professional allegiance to the law and more a question of obedience to a personal moral code.⁹ Where the two clash, the former must give way to the second, in the latter film resulting in a film gris, romantic comedy ending.

As early as 1955, Borde and Chaumeton’s seminal study noted that the PI of American noir was in part a solution to a moral dilemma, the desire to critique patriarchal power structures – the official representatives of law and order – without falling foul of code-based self-censorship:

Casting too many aspersions on the official US police force was a ticklish problem. The private detective, midway between order and crime, running with the hare and hunting with the hounds, not overly scrupulous and responsible for himself alone, satisfied both the exigencies of morality and those of the criminal adventure story.¹⁰

Satisfying this double exigency, in French noir the undercover or flawed cop replaces the American PI. In noir polars, law enforcers, usually investigating police inspecteurs or higher ranking commissaires often reveal the moral boundaries between law makers and law breakers as blurred and shifting. Both Jouvet’s investigator roles reinforce this point, particularly Onze Heures, via its lookalike undercover plot. Moreover, in other films, similarities between cops and robbers are also underlined by costuming and props: both groups often wear the iconic trench coat and drive the same front-wheel drive Citroen Tractions made famous by Pierrot Le Fou’s notorious gang. Also, the fact that the same leading actors played both gangsters and law enforcers – most notably Gabin during this period but also Pierre Fresnay and second-tier stars like Charles Vanel, Henri Vidal and newcomer Lino Ventura – reminds us that such role swapping has a firm historical foundation.

The figure widely recognised as the father of crime detection, Eugène François Vidocq, was a career criminal turned informer who subsequently managed to get himself employed by the Paris police. In 1812, Vidocq’s Brigade de la Sûreté, France’s first plain-clothes unit, composed entirely of ex-convicts (and including a few women), was made a national force by Napoleonic decree.¹¹ Demonstrating that ‘it takes a thief to catch a thief’, this legendary nineteenth-century French adventurer (and ladies’ man) was the friend of (and inspiration for) literary greats Balzac and Hugo, and model for the first French gentleman-thief detectives (Gaboriau’s Lecoq and Leblanc’s Arsène Lupin). A legendary figure in his own lifetime, Vidocq has been the subject of numerous books, plays, films and television series.¹² As a master of disguise who played many different characters in the course of his chequered career, he is also the inventor of undercover police work, infiltrating criminal networks from within prison and from the streets. Not above entrapment, extortion and fabrication of evidence, Vidocq frequently crossed the line between crime detection and criminality, long after he had set up the Sûreté, and in the course of running his own PI agency, Le Bureau des Renseignements (Information Bureau), another world first. There are echoes of Vidocq in Jouvet’s investigators, and even more so in our next two noir polars.

In Pierre Chenal’s little known and underrated contribution to the investigative noir polar, Rafles sur la ville (1958), when the right-hand man of tough cop, inspecteur Paul Vardier (Michel Piccoli) is gunned down by notorious gangster Le Fendu (Charles Vanel), Vardier makes his capture an affair of personal honour. But he is fatally distracted by his new partner’s pretty blonde wife, Lucie (Danik Patisson). During a mission to recapture the elusive Le Fendu, Vardier’s ignominious attempt to send Lucie’s rooky husband to his death backfires, provoking instead the death of an honest senior cop and close friend. The commissaire knows the truth and Vardier is doubly humiliated when Lucie comes to her senses and dumps him.

The problematic closeness between the enforcers of the law and their clients lies firstly in morally dubious methods. Vardier callously blackmails Le Fendu’s nephew, Le Niçois into informing against his uncle. It is a cliché dating back to Vidocq that capturing ruthless criminals requires ruthless methods: the end justifies the means. But the womanising Vardier crosses the line by seducing his colleague’s wife and attempting to eliminate him. He is only partially redeemed in the film’s closing scene, sacrificing his life to save others and ensuring the arrest of the arch villain.

The film abounds with visual parallels between cops and gangsters. In a stake-out scene, both groups complain of being cramped up in vans. Le Fendu and Vardier both use similar methods: charm, threats, violence. And both fall as a consequence of their sexual-emotional relationships. Moreover, dialogues of both groups repeat cliché projections of responsibility for their criminality and bad behaviour onto women.

But women are not more demonised in Chenal’s film than are men. Although she switches sides when he threatens her with violence, Le Fendu’s girl is more faithful than Vardier’s bourgeois mistress, Lucie. Le Niçois’ girl remains faithful and avenges his death. Lucie might easily have been constructed as a garce but, since she does not initiate the liaison and quickly ends it, it is Vardier who is held responsible. And the film’s arch antagonist is the male gangster, Le Fendu, a ‘cracked’ sociopath, as his nickname suggests.

In its underworld focus, Rafles follows a popular ‘tradition’ in postwar French polar. In a previous (also little known) iteration, Série noire (Foucaud, 1955) undercover cop, Léo Fardier (Vidal), infiltrates a Corsican gang by posing as an incarcerated bank robber and gaining the trust of his cell-mate, gang boss Mariani (Albert Dinan). On his release, Fardier contacts Mariani’s wife, cabaret singer Éliane (Monique Van Vooren), who is running the gang’s ‘business’ in her man’s absence. Léo’s courage and resourcefulness during several ‘jobs’ win the esteem of the entire gang, the heart of Éliane and the jealous enmity of the treacherous Jo (Robert Hossein), also in love with her. After a succession of betrayals and murders, things get even more complicated when Mariani is released and discovers his wife with Fardier. The two men decide to settle that score later and join forces against Jo and a rival gang. Leo emerges victorious from the resulting bloodbath but Éliane dies of gunshot wounds, assuring her lover, whom she still believes is a gangster, that everything will work out. The cop’s melancholy reaction as he walks off into the night, to a slow blues tune, signals clearly that his involvement with her was much more than professional.

The film’s undercover narrative inevitably plays on the blurred lines between law enforcers and their criminal counterparts. The role of the femme, aside from adding a romantic plotline, is both to focus male energies and further complicate male loyalties as members of both sides vie for her attention.

But the convoluted plot is at times hard to follow and its serial violence appears rather formulaic. The self-reflexive title – for which filmmakers had to get permission from Gallimard – appears to have backfired somewhat. The film attracted 1.6 million viewers, a reputable score but hardly a box office hit and the majority of reviewers were not impressed. Influential critic Robert Chazal praised the film, however, noting that the project dated back to 1946, suggesting the idea was in fact well ahead of its time.¹³ All critics agreed that the film was saved by some excellent acting (particularly newcomer Hossein as the seedy villain) and a moody score, written and performed by New Orleans born jazz great, Sidney Bechet playing himself in a nightclub scene.

But Série noire was eclipsed by the quintessential reference in the undercover ‘genre’: Razzia sur la Chnouf [Razzia] (Decoin, 1955), released the following month, and which attracted almost three million viewers, largely due to the presence of Gabin, freshly returned to his number one slot after a triumphant ‘comeback’ the previous year as gangster Max Le Menteur in Jacques Becker’s Grisbi (see Chapter 10). Gabin in Chnouf is a far more conventional figure than Vidal’s Fardier: upholding patriarchal power structures more than critiquing them; providing the comforting illusion that law and order will always prevail. Indeed, despite its undercover cop scenario and noir aesthetics, the film is a conservative, moralising polar whose documentary dimension is designed to expose the horrors of the narcotics trade. As Ginette Vincendeau notes,

In Chnouf, when Henri visits a chemist making illegal drugs, an air ventilator is used as a pretext to project huge rotating shadows over the room, although at this point neither of the characters is in danger … There is no sense of oppression or malaise, rather the noir mise-en-scène acts as generic shorthand, purely stylistic flourish or authorial mark.¹⁴

In line with this superficial use of noir stylistics, on a narrative and thematic level, Gabin is never really compromised and the women he encounters are unthreatening. Le Nantais’ young love-interest (Magali Noël, whose character works as a cashier in the nightclub he runs as a cover for his drugs operation) is unsullied by the trade. Loyal and obedient good girl, it is she who saves him by alerting his colleagues to the final shootout that reveals his true identity as Inspecteur Henri Ferré. The only shady dame he encounters is a ravaged junkie (Lila Kedrova as Léa), a pathetic creature who arouses pity but not desire. In the film’s unambiguously positive final scene, a self-satisfied Gabin surveys a long line of criminals, drug lords, petty dealers and users arrested thanks to his ‘good work’. Even if we recognise the film’s attempt to dissuade the public from any contact with narcotics, it is difficult today to side with such sanctimonious punishment of the down-and-out.

Gabin’s battle against drugs continues in Le désordre et la nuit [Night Affair] (Grangier, 1958) as Inspecteur Georges Vallois, of the Paris vice squad. When Vallois is called on to solve the murder of a suspected gangster and narcotics dealer, his investigation leads to a romantic entanglement with a beautiful but emotionally unstable young drug-addict, German ex-pat and aspiring singer, Lucky (Nadja Tiller). Visual investigation of the femme is centred on a single shot sequence, filmed in front of a series of mirrors (Figure 9.2). But rather than signify her potential duplicity, as the mise en scène might seem to suggest, the scene serves rather to establish Gabin’s authority, her loss of control (due to drug abuse) and her genuine attraction to him (She slaps him, he slaps her back, after which they make love.) Once he has shown her who is boss, Gabin/Vallois not only gets the girl, he solves the murder (which turns out to be a crime of passion) and busts the gang ring. Forced to choose between his job and the new relationship, he chooses the latter, resigning – like Jouvet’s Carrel – and protectively putting his ‘lucky’ girl into rehab. (She does go.)

Figure 9.2 Le désordre et la nuit.

In contrast, in American noir, when the hero encounters a potentially dangerous, powerful femme, the use of the mirror and obsessive close-framing (most notably in Welles’ The Lady from Shanghai), when not simply emphasising her desirability, are reflective of paranoid emotional/sexual investigation, based on the desire to possess her exclusively (and not some Freudian castration complex, as I have argued). Where the hero’s job is to get to the bottom of the truth of a crime as source of social disorder (as PI, lawyer or cop), one expects the investigative dimension to be paramount.

Otto Preminger’s Laura (1944) is emblematic of these processes, though in this film, it is Laura’s life-size portrait that replaces the mirror. Preminger uses the close-up parsimoniously, almost exclusively to reveal the true motive of the detective protagonist’s investigation: ostensibly legal, in reality emotional and sexual. During the first (flashback) section of the film, Gene Tierney is generally framed in wide or mid shots, the investigative mode being subtly suggested by three zoom-ins to medium close-up (MCU). Framing becomes progressively tighter following Laura’s reappearance (45 minutes into the film), when her status as object of desire is complicated by MacPherson’s suspicions of her. The interrogation scene, the most closely framed in the film, in which Laura is ‘grilled’ at the police station, uses both mise en scène, shot scale and diegetic lighting to signify the obsessively personal nature of MacPherson’s enquiry. ‘Grilled’ (three minutes) consists of a series of six close-ups (CUs) on Laura alternating with invasive two shots as she seeks to prove her innocence and avoid the detective’s sadistic, semi-accusing gaze. The scene reveals that, as much as his investigation of her as possible murder suspect, MacPherson’s deepest doubts centre on her emotional loyalties. His investigation of the crime is clearly a displacement of his disavowed desire.¹⁵

In Chenal’s Rafles, the cynical playboy cop, Vardier, falls for a pretty bourgeoise, a rich girl from the upper-class 16th arrondissement. When he first sets eyes on her, a casually admiring, rapid visual appraisal is enough to determine Vardier’s seduction plan (‘justified’ by his instant dislike of her rookie husband, his imposed new partner). In subsequent scenes, he is more intent on impressing her with stories of his professional exploits than on close scrutiny, and framing remains wide. It is only once she threatens to escape him that Chenal resorts to insistent close framing, reflecting Vardier’s suddenly frantic visual investigation. Moreover, a switch in costuming (from chic streetwear to black lingerie, suspenders and stockings) signals the character’s transformation from bourgeois wife (and mistress) to unattainable vamp. While her role is too slight to categorise her as a true fatale (and her emotional disengagement means she is no fatalitaire), her character nonetheless fulfils this narrative function, since it is Vardier’s illicit entanglement with her that precipitates his downfall. And as expected, his desperate desire to possess her is signalled by intense visual investigation.

Gabin’s undercover cop in Chnouf investigates the devastating effects of drug addiction on a minor female character (Kedrova’s Lea) via insistent close-ups. But framing remains determined by the context of the film’s social message. Substance abuse has already ruled her out as potential object of desire: haggard and out of control, her function is solely to underline the sordid and pitiful consequences of the drug trade. The film’s social voyeurism culminates in a scene that several critics disturbingly deemed the film’s best,¹⁶ in which a stoned Lea dances erotically with a handsome Black man in a seedy dope den.

In Désordre, once Gabin/Valois learns she is not a common tart or gold-digging garce (in fact, Lucky is a dropout literature student, runaway daughter of a wealthy Munich industrialist), he appears more intent on investigating and ‘arresting’ the negative effects of drug and alcohol abuse on his alluring but ‘crazy’ suspect than in establishing her guilt or innocence in the murder. He presumes the latter and sets about proving it.

The greatly attenuated visually investigative dimension of our French exemplars reflects the lesser power or narrative importance of female figures. Police procedurals and gangster noir are heavily male-centred, overlapping genres involving mostly all-male teams, in which allegiances are pushed further in a homosocial dimension, making women less central. But when the law is represented by an individual, and when that individual encounters Brigitte Bardot, the balance predictably shifts.

Gabin as law enforcer is at his most vulnerable as distinguished criminal lawyer, André Gobillot in Autant-Lara’s hugely successful adaptation of Simenon’s En cas de Malheur [In Case of Adversity]. Gabin’s very middle-aged Maître Gobillot sees his career and bourgeois marriage jeopardised by a ‘fatal’ relationship with Bardot’s sexy young prostitute. When Yvette Maudet begs him to defend her against an armed robbery and assault charge (to which she frankly admits), he agrees, easily obtaining an acquittal by means of a false testimony, eschewing payment in exchange for Yvette’s continued sexual favours. The free-spirited Yvette is more than happy to oblige, while continuing to see other men. Gobillot’s elegant wife Viviane (Edwige Feuillère), usually tolerant of his sexual dalliances, rightly sees Yvette as a serious threat but is powerless to stop her husband falling head over heels. Meanwhile the couple’s financial and social situation is under threat as Gobillot is investigated for professional impropriety.

Throwing caution to the wind, he sets Yvette up in an expensive apartment, complete with a live-in maid (Nicole Berger), ostensibly so that she no longer need ‘work’, and to protect her from an obsessively jealous ex-boyfriend, Mazetti (Italian leading man, Franco Interlenghi) who has begun stalking her. Months pass and the now pregnant Yvette has promised a delighted André she will never see Mazetti again but she is incapable of keeping her word, with tragic consequences. When she ‘escapes’ briefly to see him, Mazetti can’t bear to let her go and stabs her to death before turning himself in. By the time Gobillot arrives, all he can do is identify the body.

The film was a scandalous hit, attracting over three million viewers and nominated to represent France at the Venice biennale. But while critics generally praised Autant-Lara’s polished mise en scène and the performances of the film’s three stars, particularly Bardot, reactions were predictably polarised according to whether its central relationship was judged immoral and sordid or ‘pure’ and authentic. Prominent literary figure Claude Mauriac judged the film ‘cruel but clean’.¹⁷ Interestingly, the two leading female critics of the day, France Roche and Simone Dubreuilh, were in the same camp.¹⁸ For both women, the film convincingly constructs its central love relationship as emotionally pure, exposing and escaping the hypocritical dictates of bourgeois marriage and morality, as per Autant-Lara’s stated intention.¹⁹ Even a brief scene unambiguously suggesting a ménage à trois with Yvette’s maid (which Yvette instigates and which could almost be read as a nod to de Beauvoir and Sartre’s famously ‘open’ relationship) is seen as part of this ‘living cleanly’, as Gobillot himself puts it.

Like Gabin, Bardot’s star persona is based on her perceived naturalness: rather than act, both appear to simply exist on the screen, projecting aspects of their inner selves. But Vincendeau also argues that Bardot’s new ‘brand’ of beauty (contrasted with older, established female stars, epitomised here by Edwige Feuillère’s haute couture elegance) is a carefully constructed, therefore fake naturalness. Her long blonde hair is often worn un-coiffed but it is dyed. While her inexpensive, simple clothing is made of soft natural simple fabrics (especially cotton) and she is often barefoot, she also wears heavy eye make-up and lipstick. Her graceful, ‘natural’ poise and dancing ability are in fact the result of years of training (in classical ballet).²⁰ The underlying assumption is, not only that the natural is always already culturally constructed (human nature does not exist as a thing in and of itself), but also that cultural constructions – here Bardot’s performance of female beauty – are arbitrary, like language. It is undeniable that many patriarchal cultural constructions aim to pass themselves off as natural in order to further male reproductive interests. But the point I would make here is that cultural constructions of female beauty, while they vary considerably, both between and within cultures and over time, are not arbitrary but highly motivated, seeking (in popular forms) to imitate evolved features that signal reproductive fitness. It is not arbitrary that Bardot’s constructed beauty, her use of cosmetics and clothing, together with her casual but poised deportment, all serve to accentuate physical features connoting youth, health and fertility. Naturalness is attractive because it signals key aspects of reproductive fitness that would have been hard to fake in ancestral environments. Of course, humans have long used technology to accentuate and/or fake natural beauty in both women and men cross-culturally. The advent of cosmetic surgery during the twentieth century – which Bardot herself has famously refused in her later years – can be seen as simply the next step in an ancient trend.

As international sex symbol, French cinema’s biggest female star (with 15 films, including Vadim’s cult classic, Et Dieu créa la femme [And God Created Woman] (1956)), Bardot’s highly eroticised persona and visual presence are clearly key to the film’s ethos and its aesthetics. Unsurprisingly perhaps, the camera’s infatuation with Bardot as it relays the point of view of Gabin is more an admiring but understated response to her exhibitionistic character and persona than an anxious investigation.

This is particularly evident in their famous opening scene in which she offers to pay for Gobillot’s legal services in kind. Autant-Lara opens the exchange on Gabin in full shot several metres away, then closes in to a series of reverse mid shots as Bardot edges along a desk. An MCU of an impassive Gabin, then cuts back out to a long shot as Bardot (shot from behind) lifts her skirt: an almost subliminal (on screen for barely one second) low angle glimpse of her long, stockinged legs and suspenders in the foreground (Figure 9.3).²¹

Figure 9.3 En cas de Malheur.

This shot famously replaces a censored image that is highly emblematic of Bardot’s sex-kitten persona. In it, her character lifts her skirt much higher, almost to the waist, revealing naked buttocks, for a full four seconds. (A more modest version of the split-second image appears in posters for the film, with Bardot’s skirt still covering her suspenders.) The subliminal shot that remains in the final version is perhaps more consonant with Gabin’s on-screen reaction. His character remains motionless in the background, legs astride and hands in the pockets of his immaculate double-breasted suit, apparently unmoved. But as a weeping Yvette is about to leave, he agrees to take the case.

When the affair begins, it is an open relationship. Yvette is delighted to be free to see whoever she wishes but simultaneously piqued at Gobillot’s lack of interest in her life outside their liaison, i.e. his lack of jealousy and failure to investigate her. Investigation is not long coming: in the same scene he suspects her of taking drugs. Assuming she is on a slippery slope to addiction (as with his young mistress in Désordre), he immediately takes hold of her face, holds up a table lamp, scrutinises her eyes and slaps her across the face like an angry father or a cop conducting a rough interrogation. But no, Yvette is no junkie, she has simply started dealing coke to repay his services, and promptly hands him a wad of cash. Now showing a mixture of paternal concern and professional alarm (as a lawyer he knows the risks) he flushes the drugs down the toilet, returns the cash and the investigation is over, so to speak. She offers fidelity in exchange; he is apparently not interested but moves her into a better apartment.

Anxious investigation is transferred to the manically possessive Mazetti, who literally stalks Yvette for much of the remainder of the film, shredding her wardrobe when she refuses to move in with him; posting himself in the street outside her apartment, scrutinising and seeking to control her movement from a distance. Their few scenes together end in nervous close-ups as he interrogates her over her continued liaison with Gobillot; in a passionate embrace when he thinks he has won …

When Yvette admits to seeing Mazetti again after promising she won’t, Gobillot wants to end the relationship, but his resolve is no better than hers. When he refuses to employ surveillance tactics with her, she suggests he sequester her. He complies, buying her a new apartment and when he learns she is pregnant to him, moves in. Throughout this section of the film, his point of view (POV) shots of her are admiring and confidently proprietary, his somewhat paternal gaze both desiring and devoted. There is none of Mazetti’s manic investigative gaze. In this film, as in our previous examples, the investigation of the femme via the POV of a romantically involved male character most often equates to a form of mate-guarding (an attempt to monopolise access to one’s mate; to keep her in the relationship and prevent access by intrasexual rivals), which may be protectively benign, as with Gobillot, or suspiciously threatening, as with Mazetti. While seeking sexual and emotional freedom, Bardot’s character actively solicits a high level of mate-guarding on the part of her older protector.

As early as 1992, evolutionary anthropologist and psychologist Barbara Smuts proposed a rethinking of the origins of human pair-bonding, which were assumed to have evolved primarily for ‘economic’ reasons, from male provisioning to females and their offspring of vital protein and calories in the form of meat from hunting. Drawing on a large body of data from primate studies and anthropological records from diverse human societies, Smuts proposed that, as well as the provision of resources, male protection of females from aggression, infanticide and sexual coercion by other males constituted an equally important, perhaps even more important causal factor in leading hominid females to develop long-term alliances, or pair-bonds with males.²² Sarah Mesnick subsequently developed the concept in what she termed ‘the bodyguard hypothesis of female mate choice’: ‘that situation in which a female chooses to mate with a particular male based on the male’s ability to defend her, or her young, from aggression by other, con-specific males’.²³ One prediction of the bodyguard hypothesis is that human females will prefer physically strong, dominant males:

Female preference for dominant males can lead to selection for increased size, strength, and fighting ability among males, as well as to the evolution of traits that might advertise a male’s ability to protect females … females may prefer an aggressive male as a mate because of the implication that he is an aggressor capable of protecting her and, subsequently, her young.²⁴

A second prediction is that a human male bodyguard will exact a price for his protection in the form of exclusive sexual access, in order to advance his own genetic interests by ensuring paternity certainty over his mate’s offspring. Exclusive sexual access may not be in the female’s own reproductive interests and she may seek other reproductive opportunities, which the male will seek to prevent. In other words, the bodyguard hypothesis also predicts aggressive male mate-guarding, often fuelled by sexual jealousy.

Empirical studies support evolutionist claims that sexual jealousy is a form of mate-guarding, closely linked to romantic attachment, constituting an adaptive response to the threat of defection of a cherished mate to a rival.²⁵ Moreover, paternity uncertainty means that male jealousy is predicted to be triggered more by cues of sexual infidelity (whether real or perceived), and is thus closely linked to aggressive (sometimes lethal) mate-guarding. Female jealousy, on the other hand, is predicted to be triggered more easily by emotional defection, in other words, the partner falling in love with another. This is because of the greater threat that the male will desert, transferring resources and protection to the new mate and leaving the woman (and offspring) vulnerable.

In Malheur, predicted patterns of male sexual jealousy and female emotional jealousy are illustrated by the attitudes of all four main characters. Gabin/Gobillot exhibits no sexual jealousy, visual investigation or other mate-guarding behaviours towards Yvette, as long as he sees her purely as a short-term mate, presumably one in a long, on-going series of ludic sexual encounters. But once he falls in love with her and decides to invest economic and emotional resources, he demands exclusive sexual access, even before she falls pregnant. The passionately romantic Mazetti seeks to monopolise Yvette from the start, whence his manic mate-guarding that culminates in the tragic murder, precipitated by her refusal of a monogamous relationship.

Although both men and women feel jealousy with equal intensity and are equally prone to aggression in intimate relationships,²⁶ men’s greater strength and higher propensity to resort to physical violence explains why, cross-culturally, men are the perpetrators in over 90 per cent of cases of domestic violence and partner homicide. The prime motivators of such violence are, overwhelmingly, real or perceived female infidelity and/or abandonment of the relationship. Researcher Margo Wilson’s prediction that the greatest risk of partner homicide would be for young women of the highest reproductive value, i.e. especially attractive to rival males, has been borne out by a number of studies.²⁷

To return to the film, Yvette’s murder (as that of Dietrich’s character in Martin Roumagnac) is an extreme manifestation of this all too common social reality. Ironically, Interlenghi’s character evokes Gabin’s poetic realist tragic lover, so often confronted with libidinous/incestuous older males and prone to crimes of passion, as we have seen. Even more politicised than pre-war Gabin, Interlenghi’s poor medical student, Mazetti, paying for his studies with night-time factory work is an original invention of the left-wing filmmakers. But his revolutionary utopian ideals (he tells a perplexed Yvette that if she committed a crime because she was hungry, then she is justified in doing so and must feel no shame) are marked by self-righteousness and a propensity for violence – as when he cuts her clothes to shreds in a grotesquely humorous foreshadowing of the murder.

In line with the predictions of evolutionary theory, Viviane displays no jealousy of her husband’s frequent sexual affairs, seeking instead to keep up bourgeois appearances and to ensure her husband does not develop an emotional attachment. Their separate bedrooms suggest their relationship is no longer sexual, but it initially appears warm and companionate. She tolerates his lustful dalliances, but a love affair is a threat to their relationship and her social standing, thus she attempts to control it (driving him to Yvette’s hotel, shrewdly offering to pay for half of the new apartment, rather than have it in her husband’s mistress’ name). Her jealous outburst over a huge bunch of white roses intended for Yvette, which Gobillot mistakenly sends to his own address, gains her audience sympathy. Her distress over such an overt symbol of romantic attachment reveals she still loves her husband and is not motivated by status concerns alone.

Yvette is the adored object of multiple male gazes who, between them, provide for all her (sexual, emotional, material) needs, thus she has no cause for jealousy. Gobillot’s wife is not a rival since Yvette does not seek to replace her socially. Indeed, when Mazetti suspiciously suggests she is angling for a wedding ring, she displays moral outrage. According to her intuitive system of ethics, she is not doing wrong by Viviane because she is not seeking to steal her husband. With self-serving naivety, she does not see that having his child might be construed as a form of mate poaching. However, she does understand intuitively that romantic love and sexual jealousy go together and is perplexed, even a little ‘vexed’ when Gobillot shows no possessiveness of her. When Mazetti visits her at the first apartment, she logically interprets his jealousy as a sign of love.²⁸ Childlike, she narcissistically craves being the centre of erotic and paternal attention. Gabin/Gobillot provides the latter, leading her to behave like a spoiled child, declaring to the possessive Mazetti that she must be allowed to do whatever she wants. But she displays none of the other negative features of grandiose narcissism: the self as perfect; callous disregard for others (as seen in Chapter 8). Indeed, it is the self-righteous Mazetti who ticks the latter box.

Gobillot compromises professional career, marriage, financial security and social standing risking everything for Yvette, whose promiscuous insouciance makes Bardot’s character – which was tailored to her star persona – a new kind of fatalitaire. Her sexual amorality evokes Clouzot’s Manon, but while she appears to lack the latter’s pragmatic, somewhat calculating venality, she also lacks Manon’s passionate attachment, while remaining economically and emotionally dependent on patriarchal benevolence. Unlike previous romantic fatalitaires (Chapters 5 and 6) and demonic fatales (Chapter 7), she cannot decide emotionally between her young lover, whom the French describe as ‘l’amant de coeur’ [lover of the heart] and her father-figure protector-provider. Bardot’s originality is that she appears genuinely attracted to Gabin/Gobillot, as well as fond of and grateful to him. Neither materialistic, class-conscious nor malicious, her frequent lies serve her need for freedom of movement. Bardot’s ludic fatalitaire thus possesses a level of authenticity and childlike innocence that are lacking in the more calculating garce.

De Beauvoir admired Bardot’s frank sexual agency and freedom of movement and her first husband and impresario, Roger Vadim, marketed it. But her sexual unruliness, however modern, however integral to her attraction, remains paradoxically tied to a system based on gender inequality, as Vincendeau has observed.²⁹ Without contraception, young women’s sexual ‘liberation’ often ended in dangerous, backroom abortions or ‘unwanted’ pregnancies. Both situations are documented in Malheur: Yvette has already had two abortions and her maid Nicole has lost a child, whom she was forced to put into care.

Contemporary commentators noted Bardot’s paradoxical reception: fans’ polarised love-hate relationship, particularly as compared to Gabin, who was universally liked. Bardot was most popular with younger, single women who desired to emulate her (constructed) naturalness and carefree sexual agency, while older married women often saw her as a threat. This split is mirrored in the film’s diegesis: Yvette’s prostitute friend with whom she commits the bungled robbery and her pretty maid both display admiration and a desire to emulate (though they are unable to match her) while Viviane understandably sees her as a deadly rival. Older, married women spectators no doubt identified with the plight of the abandoned older wife, intelligently scripted and beautifully played by veteran actress, Edwige Feuillère. Given Bardot’s astronomically high reproductive fitness and mate value, coupled with the fact that her persona was sexually available, warm, responsive and ostensibly uninterested in extracting commitment or resources, it is small wonder Vadim claimed she was ‘the married man’s impossible dream’.³⁰ But as ludic fatalitaire, she also poses a threat to any male attempting to monopolise her, as the film so graphically demonstrates.

This chapter has seen law enforcers frequently involved in investigating potentially dangerous females but has not uncovered a classic femme fatale. The femmes in French polars (even the progressive images of independent professional women in Orfèvres and Onze heures) are less powerful or less duplicitous, or both, resulting in a lesser focus on their visual investigation. Bardot emerges as the most powerful figure: a carefree, modern fatalitaire who prefigures the sexual revolution of the 1960s. But her unruly agency, in being tied to a childlike, economically dependent sex-kitten persona, depends largely on a patriarchal system for its scandalous impact. And her character’s tragic fate reveals the double-edged sword of the bodyguard hypothesis, as her older protector fails to save her from the manic sexual jealousy of her murderously over-protective younger lover.

Gabin/Gobillot falls for Bardot’s Yvette because of her disarming sincerity and because she needs and genuinely desires him. In all three of Gabin’s law enforcer noirs of this period in which he has a romantic relationship with a much younger woman in her early 20s, it is she who first approaches him sexually and who falls for him first. This flattering narrative framing means that, even as a rotund, white-haired cop or bourgeois lawyer, often risking his career for the sake of romantic fulfilment, Gabin’s middle-aged characters retain something of the star’s pre-war good-bad boy persona and his status as both subject and object of desire. Constructing his middle-aged characters as ‘girl magnet’ rather than seducing patriarch also conveniently allows him to escape the unenviable position of incestuous father.

In three of the seven films discussed in this chapter, the patriarchal nature of French society is underlined by the continued presence of the middle-aged Gabin in romantic relationships with women 20 to 30 years younger than himself. This pattern is seen across the star’s production during the postwar period (1946–59). As Gabin (born in 1904) aged, his ‘leading ladies’ grew progressively younger.³¹ Out of 15 films across our postwar noir corpus, his character is romantically involved in 12, only two of which were with actresses his own age: Martin Roumagnac (1946), with Dietrich (b. 1901), and Au-delà des grilles (1948), opposite Isa Miranda (b. 1905). In the remaining ten films, he was partnered with women at least 12 years his junior: for example, Colette Mars (b. 1916), in Miroir (1947), whom he almost married, and Madeleine Robinson (b. 1916), in Leur dernier nuit (1953). From his comeback hit Grisbi (1954)³² until Malheur (1958), the age gap widened to an average of 25 years. Born in 1934, 33 years his junior, Brigitte Bardot (whose initials spell Bébé, Baby in French) was the youngest of all his female co-stars and the only one to enjoy equal billing. Although there is much evidence to suggest that cross-culturally, women (still) prefer men who are older (and taller, and higher status) than themselves,³³ such evolved preferences are exaggerated in low gender equality, low sex-ratio societies in which older males monopolise resources and status and can impose their own preferences for younger women, to whom they also provide protection.

Positive images of masculinity centre on courage, dominance (whether physical, intellectual or social) and protectiveness. These qualities, cross-culturally admired by men and desired by women, are relatively unaffected by age. In the films we have covered, desirable masculinity takes the form of muscular athletic beauty (Vidal in Série noire); intelligence and intuition (Jouvet in Orfèvres and Onze heures); heavy-set physical ‘formidableness’ (Gabin in Chnouf; Désordre) and social status (Gabin as Gobillot in Malheur). Gabin and Jouvet’s older characters also display high levels of paternal warmth and protection, acting as ‘good bodyguards’. Where investigator narratives involve the underworld, despite the often blurred boundaries between law enforcers and law breakers, negative features of hegemonic or dominant masculinity are generally transferred to (though sometimes shared with) criminal antagonists: aggressiveness, ruthless physical violence, jealous stalking, and/or the so-called feminine vices of cowardice and duplicity.

In the next chapter we will shift our focus to gangsters as heroes, in films that, once again, either reinforce or question traditional gender roles.