Choice of Arms (1981)

With Melville's death, Tavernier and Corneau became the masters of French film noir, but the latter has the dreamlike mood that the genre really needs to be effective. Le choix des armes has many effective scenes (usually involving either Depardieu or Lanvin) but sometimes leaves us cold. There is a little too much exposition in the storytelling--why show us Montand and his buddy smashing up the gang lord's opulent house when there is no dramatic effect to be gained? Or the elaborate four-way car pursuit (did the budget allow for all those stunt-drivers, so Corneau thought Why not?).The acting is mostly exceptional. The young Gérard Lanvin gives us a very frustrated young detective, Michel Galabru is his burnt-out superior, Richard Anconina plays a man trying to settle down to happy domesticity and failing, and Depardieu is simply great as Mickey le dingue, crazy and moving at the same time. The woman who plays Dany's wife with burning resentment takes over every scene she's in.

When I saw Yves Montand step outside his stately farm house in his gum boots I could not suppress a snort. From then on I was unable to take that character seriously (and that was pretty early into the movie). The whole set-up of the couple played by Montand and Catherine Deneuve seemed to me absolutely unrealistic and absurd. Horse breeding, buying the biggest mansion in Southern Ireland, while the (almost completely unrelated) story unfolds, come on! It is simply not possible to take that at face value as the movie apparently wants us to. If it was meant as an almost dreamlike fantasy, then it was a pretty corny one, if you ask me.Montand's acting occasionally had an odd goofball quality which at times came in handy (his great performance in Wages of Fear comes to mind). Here the goofball aspect plainly shines through, but with him as an ex gangster who has become some kind of landed gentry it is anything but an asset to the quality of the movie. I was really amazed to learn that Montand made Police Python 357 with the same director. It is a much better movie and he is brilliant there.So probably the script is the source of my dissatisfaction. The movie has lengths (a long, inconsequential sequence of a group of cars following another car, an elaborate smashing up of the living room of a fairly unimportant minor character). For Catherine Deneuve this must have been one of the most ungrateful roles in her distinguished career. She mainly drives up and down the access lane of the estate in a little Ford or sits in an anonymous hotel room waiting for her husband to call. Oh yes, there is some mare-trouble back at the farm, but that does not amount to much.It's strange, the character played by Gérard Depardieu is very convincing as human bulldozer who occasionally has a heart. I feel that this character was somehow let down by the script. He is the only driving force of the whole plot, the surroundings seem to be either passive or undecided. So he becomes undecided himself (and that's poison for a movie that is based on action). No wonder the guy turned into a raving maniac, come to think of it.

2 prison inmates, Mickey (Gérard Depardieu) and Serge escape from jail. After a trap set by other gangsters that leaves Serge badly injured, the two baddies take refuge to Noël Durieux (Yves Montand), a former gangster who leads a bourgeois life by running a stud farm. After Serge dies from his injuries, Noël has the visit of two cops Sarlat (Gérard Lanvin) and Bonnardot (Michel Galabru) who question him about Mickey and Serge and Noël affirms that he doesn't know anything about them. And things take a darker turn for because he believes Noël betrayed him, Mickey gives him a hard time. Noël has no other choice than to eliminate him.As the heir of Jean-Pierre Melville and Claude Sautet, Alain Corneau brought to French cinema a crop of very well controlled thrillers in their writing and shooting. "Le Choix Des Armes" is part of this league and a valuable illustration of Corneau's stylish approach of French detective film. Adopting a rather sparse directing and a tight, parallel editing, the filmmaker takes pleasure in introducing the main characters and as the film progresses to deepen their personality. Like the greatest filmmakers, Corneau has his style and his set of themes. Communication is a recurrent theme in his filmography, especially the difficulties and absence of it. We learn that the cute little girl is Mickey's daughter and he had it just before he was jailed. The two cops work with different methods which doesn't make their relationships easy. Mickey and Durieux are caught in a vicious spiral that is the result of a happy misunderstanding: because Mickey thinks that Durieux gave him to the police, Durieux has to come back to his former gangster life to get rid of his protégé. As they obey to their respective emotions, the two men and especially Mickey get embroiled in a ruthless system that dwarfs them and prevents any reconciliation between them. A permanent feature (the infernal system) that affects the main characters in Corneau's previous films like in "Police Python 357" (1976) starring Yves Montand.This somber story is painstakingly built at all levels from the organization of the scenario to the creation of the sequences. Sometimes, one shot or a few ones are sufficient to Corneau to present us the persona of a character in the film like Dany (a young Richard Anconina)'s dumb wife or the duo of cops between ambitious Sarlat and seasoned, disillusioned Bonnardot. The cast lives up to the demands of the story with Depardieu much better than Montand as impulsive, immature Mickey. Horses in Durieux's domain are an evident symbol. One could also hail scenery discerningly chosen that cement the characters' social position, either it is Noël Durieux's lascivious mansion in the country or Dany's shabby flat in popular suburbs. At that time in 1980-1, rare were the directors who dare to shoot in those high-risk outskirts.This is excellent stuff and it's well known: it's better not to get bogged down in rut. Otherwise, you'll have nothing to say anymore. Thus, Corneau proved his ability at weaving prime thrillers. His next film, "Fort Saganne" (1984) will go in another cinematographic direction: the epic film.

On the basis of a very traditional diagram, almost austere in its banality, Michel Grisolia, the scenario writer, gave his realizer a springboard from which this last built a true psychological drama, rich of subtle nuances and learnedly worked drafts. The police aspect interests less Corneau than the painting of the underworld, than the denunciation of the police methods or than the purulent proletarian company of today. The setting in scene is fantastic and remarkable is interpretation (Depardieu!), let us announce however a light Manicheism and certain doubtful psychological analyses.