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Panique



Proud, eccentric, and antisocial, Monsieur Hire (Michel Simon) has always kept to himself. But after a woman turns up dead in the Paris suburb where he lives, he feels drawn to a pretty young newcomer to town (Viviane Romance), discovers that his neighbors are only too ready to be suspicious of him, and is framed for the murder. Based on a novel by Georges Simenon, Julien Duvivier's first film after his return to France from Hollywood finds the acclaimed poetic realist applying his consummate craft to darker, moodier ends. Propelled by its two deeply nuanced lead performances, the tensely noirish Panique exposes the dangers of the knives-out mob mentality, delivering as well a pointed allegory of the behavior of Duvivier's countrymen during the war.

SPECIAL FEATURES

• New 2K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• The Art of Subtitling, a new short documentary by Bruce Goldstein, founder and copresident of Rialto Pictures, about the history of subtitles
• New interview with author Pierre Simenon, the son of novelist Georges Simenon
• Conversation from 2015 between critics Guillemette Odicino and Eric Libiot about director Julien Duvivier and the film's production history
• Rialto Pictures rerelease trailer
• New English subtitle translation by Duvivier expert Lenny Borger
• PLUS: Essays by film scholar James Quandt and Borger

The subtitling feature on this looks like it'll be fascinating. I wonder if it's the same piece Goldstein used in his lecture series last year. Did anyone here attend?

Is this the first Rialto distributed title Criterion has released in years? I thought that relationship was dead after we never saw Le Petit Soldat released by Criterion following the restoration of that film.

I caught the restoration of this last year and really enjoyed it as a pitch-black critique of French Vichyism; the last 20 minutes are among the darkest I've ever seen in a noir. Very excited for this and grateful Criterion is giving it the physical release it deserves.

I was only thinking the other day when is 'Panique going to come out?'. I've only ever viewed it on poor quality bootleg and loved it, so I can't wait to revisit in pristine condition.

This is welcomed news as Rialto has a bunch of French and Italian titles that have under gone restorations. Hopefully, this is just the beginning.

Rialto has always had a good relationship with Criterion. The reason we haven't had any releases from them is that they are the main theatrical distributor for StudioCanal and most of the films in their library are therefore inaccessible to Criterion by no fault of their own.

Not a huge fan of film-noir but I'm always down for examinations of the mob mentality. It's a very fascinating subject (to me, at least).

If that's the case, I can almost guarantee you'll find this compelling, Boosmahn.

That’s what I thought as well, jdw5275. Many of these recent Rialto films that I’ve seen screened at the Film Forum (including this one) have no connection to Studio Canal.

Love the sound of this one. Will definitely have to pick it up.

I'm only familiar with this material from the 1989 version by Patrice Leconte but remember finding it quite devastating at the time, even taken out of its post-war context, so I'm very curious to see this! (I also think that Richard Ayoade film of a few years back, The Double, took a few pointers from it)

Colin, maybe/hopefully this will goose Kino into upgrading Monsieur Hire!

If the subtitling extra doesn't quote this forum's revolt against the original La haine "Snoopy" subs, I say we riot

They did pretty well with the Malle I thought so maybe this can also be fixed.

Here's Rialto's rerelease trailer.

BTW, according to Cannes Classics 2015 page, the film is "presented by TF1 DA. As the original negative has disappeared, a 2K restoration from the nitrate intermediate film print done at Digimage." No Gaumont or Eclair.

I reviewed the French BD release and I dont recall it being problematic. It might have slightly elevated blacks but it isnt Un carnet de bal as far as I recall.

Also, Ascenseur pour l'échafaud most likely as a specific encoding issue on its French BD.

colinr0380 wrote: Mon Sep 17, 2018 11:05 pm I'm only familiar with this material from the 1989 version by Patrice Leconte but remember finding it quite devastating at the time, even taken out of its post-war context, so I'm very curious to see this! (I also think that Richard Ayoade film of a few years back, The Double, took a few pointers from it)

This also makes for a fascinating comparison with Simon in Panique a far more bullish and confrontational character than Blanc's creepy and nebbishy M.Hire .

It might something inbetween, a bit washed out but not à la Echaffaud.
In any case, here are the review I wrote at the time, with screencaps and it doesn't look much washed out, though it looks quite dark.

NABOB OF NOWHERE wrote: Tue Sep 18, 2018 6:43 amThis also makes for a fascinating comparison with Simon in Panique a far more bullish and confrontational character than Blanc's creepy and nebbishy M.Hire .

That does seem like it will weight the material quite differently (I kind of think of Michel Simon as close to Charles Laughton in performance-type terms!). It also seems interesting that Michel Simon did both this and La Chienne, as (at least based on my memories of how the 1989 version of the material plays out) I could kind of imagine the same story reaching a similar conclusion before it veers into something else!

Unexpected (for me anyway) choice and looking forward to my first viewing of this film.

Watched my copy of this and didn't care much for it. I thought the film's portrayal of mob violence was ludicrous and too tied to its symbolic post-war meaning. I easily can believe in a world in which the majority of a town could turn on Simon's character. I don't buy a version of the world where literally every occupant of a town, major or minor, does so, and in such a broad, near-farcical fashion (the butcher bribing a young girl to unambiguously lie about molestation in front of others is truly a low point in the film-- I get this is representative of the perceived hypocrisy, but on what plane of existence does this scene play out in the open air of a butcher shop with a half-dozen witnesses who are totes A-OK with it? Gimme a breaksville). Even the most small-minded, self-serving French towns produced Resistance fighters during Occupation... Honestly, I think Lang's Fury is the only mob mentality movie I've seen that registers as plausible, which is probably why it endures so well. Maybe/hopefully I'll like the remake more when I get to it in my Cesar Awards rounds

I never realised that but except Panique, it seems like all the Duvivier movies I preferred are pre-1939 : La belle équipe, Un carnet de bal, Pépé le moko, and most especially La fin du jour, which is by far my favourite Duvivier (while my GF preferred La belle équipe, because of how pessimistic and cynical La fin du jour is).

tenia wrote: Wed Sep 26, 2018 9:15 am I never realised that but except Panique, it seems like all the Duvivier movies I preferred are pre-1939 : La belle équipe, Un carnet de bal, Pépé le moko, and most especially La fin du jour, which is by far my favourite Duvivier (while my GF preferred La belle équipe, because of how pessimistic and cynical La fin du jour is).

Surely with that prerogative you could choose almost any Duvivier to not prefer. Did she watch the 'optimistic' version?

We were shown the pessimistic one. We saw it in 2014 at Lyon Lumière festival, so that was the recent Pathé restoration, in which the pessimistic ending has been restored as the default one (the optimistic one is an extra on the video release).

However, I have forgotten a contextual detail about her : she rather disliked La fin du jour because of how pessimistic and cynical it was, but because we watched La belle équipe and La fin du jour back to back, that gave the edge to La belle équipe instead already by sheer comparison. She saw Panique, and it fared inbetween, though she was rather positive towards it. I don't think she saw any other Duvivier.

I would however argue that Voici le temps des assassins is even more pessimistic and cynical than La fin du jour, which, through Michel Simon's character, still shows some lightness. Voici le temps doesn't, it's relentlessly dark about human nature, but as a whole, it also seemed superficial with its characters precisely because of that, to my overall dislike (especially since it's a rather long movie).

I was going to mention Voici le temps as perhaps the bleakest of all Duvivier's work irrespective of the era. However in the later stuff I do quite like L'affaire Maurizius because it balances the pessimism with an air of tragedy