La tête d’un homme (Der Kopf eines Mannes)

In a crowded Parisian café, a penniless bon vivant promises a large sum of money for the murder of his rich aunt. When she is found dead shortly afterwards, all the clues point to an obtuse petty criminal: an open-and-shut case for the police. Only Inspector Maigret has doubts - and risks his career to track down the real culprit. The third Maigret film adaptation and one of the very best. Georges Simenon wanted to direct it himself, but his ideas were too unconventional for the producers; they hired Julien Duvivier, who inventively evoked the desolate atmosphere of the original: dirty streets, melancholy chansons, night-black shadows, bold audiovisual arabesques - and at the center, a Dostoyevsky-like confrontation between Maigret (Harry Baur: weighty, yet mentally agile behind the moustache visor) and a dazzling evil, extravagantly embodied by Russian émigré Valéry Inkijinoff. In 1946, Duvivier would turn to Simenon for a second time with Panique, with equally brilliant results. (Christoph Huber)

Photo: Austrian Film Museum