User Reviews

Every promise fulfilled: after "du Rififi A Tokyo ","Symphonie Pour Un Massacre " is the great thriller Deray threatened to make ; abetted by two first-class writers ,Claude Sautet ,whose second and third works ("Classes Tous Risques " and "L'Arme A Gauche") should be considered films noirs classics and José Giovanni (who plays a small part here and would become himself a director in 1967 with " La Loi Du Survivant"),Deray shows his influences and brings them all back home:

Take the very long scene on a train :Jean-Pierre Melville could have filmed it but Deray pulls it off masterfully .Besides, the scene is entirely silent ,with stunning shots of a train belting though the night. When the traitor kills one of his accomplices,faces remain cold, impassive , with just a little amazement (Auclair))

In several respects ,it's Lacombe /Clouzot 's "Le Dernier Des Six" (1939) transferred to the harsher black and white world of the sixties with a crucial difference :we know from the start who is doing away with his so-called friends.

There's elements taken from the pure detective story : the way Vanel discovers the truth is par excellence the classic trick :the culprit 's words give him away.

The Americans,who are bankers and thus cannot be fooled by forged dollars provide the movie with a welcome comic relief.For the movie has the perfection of the mechanism of the clock ;it's all linked together with virtuosity ,and one thinks that the criminal will get away with it,weren't it for an unexpected deus ex machina,down to the wire.

Michel Magne's score ,very tuneful,contrats with the blackness of the atmosphere ;Prodis productions would use him again the next year in "Angélique Marquise Des Anges" in which Rochefort and Michèle Mercier would meet again :a marchioness and her broke lawyer ,which seems almost ironical when you know the ending of "Symphonie" .

A thriller you should put on your must-see list ;I take the advantage of this short review to recommend Deray's overlooked,unsung next-to-last effort ,"Un Crime" (1993): an in camera drama ,with only two actors :a jaded Delon who does not hog the stage and Manuel Blanc who matches him all along the way in this gruesome story.

A group of criminals get involved in an unusually ambitious project which will require a great deal of money. One of the members recognizes the financial opportunity of a lifetime. He is determined to lay his hands on the fortune, even if it means resorting to deceit, betrayal and murder...

"Symphonie" is notable for at least three things. The first is the excellent plot, which evolves with clockwork precision. The plot is a thing of beauty, as cunning and intricate as one of those balls-within-other-balls carved in ivory. The second is the fine acting, with a special mention to Jean Rochefort, in one of his first major roles. Rochefort is excellent as the cool, calculating traitor. Here you've got a highly intelligent man who is fond of meticulous planning, but does not shy away from sudden fights or blood-drenched improvisations... The third is a memorable musical score, which fits the movie's mood(s) like a glove.

The whole works very well and qualifies as a superior "polar".

Part of the action is situated in Brussels, what with the said traitor staying in the Hotel Amigo. Viewers can catch tantalizing glimpes of the historic heart of the city. If you, dear reader, ever find yourself in the same neighbourhood, be sure to visit the central market place, an architectural ensemble of singular beauty and interest.

I waited for this film since many years, now. And at last I got it. I read the novel when I was a kid and since...Directed by the very efficient Jacques Deray, it is a very hard to catch film. Deray made RIFIFI IN TOKYO, starring Charles Vanel too, and this last one is more easy to watch.

Concerning SYMPHONY...it's the story of gangsters, smuggling drug dealers who try to cheat, steal each other. Actually only one among them is a kind of traitor, who tries to keep a suit case full of money. So he has to kill his accomplices. But everything doesn't go as he plans.

Very paced triller, with also an unexpected ending.

Jean Rochefort is here a powerful villain character, as we saw not so often with him.

Taking part in a Film Noir Challenge on ICM,I felt it was a perfect time to watch a "new" Noir with my favourite movie star: Michele Mercier. Checking her credits one by one, I was thrilled to spot a review by fellow IMDber dbdumonteil for a Mercier Noir I've never heard of before. This led to me becoming corrupt.

View on the film:

The lone figure walking into the final shot, the beautiful Michele Mercier gives a outstanding, expressive turn as Madeleine, whose frustrations over her husband Clavet's continuing gamble in building closer ties in the underworld, are kicked by Mercier with a Femme Falale feisty edge. Getting the planned drug deal on track with the skill of pros who have been in this game for years, the ensemble cast give incredible hard-nose Noir loner turns, from co-writer Jose Giovanni's lingering air of mystery as Moreau, to Michel Auclair's enthusiastic youthfulness of Clavet.

Breaking the rails which bonded them by smearing blood on the tracks, Jean Rochefort draws the complexities building in Jabeke's betrayal of his fellow gang members, with the wise move of giving him limited dialogue, allowing Rochefort to facial express the weight on Jabeke's shoulders over his silencing of those who get close to uncovering his betrayal.

Displaying the same meticulous eye later appearing in his La piscine (1969-also reviewed) co-writer/(with Jose Giovanni and Claude Sautet) director Jacques Deray & cinematographer Claude "Nephew of Jean" Renoir compose this symphony of a Noir massacre with pristine stylisation, loading a atmosphere of dread in refine long-shots going down the carriages filled with Jabeke's betrayals. Punching out when Jabeke's backstabbing risks being found out, Deray hits with shards of whip-pans coming out of low shadows to the blunt, blast force of Jabeke's murders.

Featuring not one, but three film makers, the adaptation of Alain Reynaud-Fourton's story Les Mystifies by Deray/Giovanni and Sautet thrillingly binds the bond of these five Noir thugs with superb, measured dialogue on the years of trust and friendship which leads to them doing the drug deal as a group. Shattering all trusts with Jabeke's betrayal, the writers magnificently sink Jabeke deeper into Noir waters each time he tries to widen the net by killing suspecting former friends, with each murder getting Jabeke closer to hearing the final notes of a massacre symphony.

As far as we Brits were aware, Jacques Deray's run of successful crime thrillers really began with "La Piscine" (1969), so I'm very grateful to Movie Detective for making available some of his earlier woks: having seen this one, I'm keen to see the others ("Rififi in Tokyo", "Crime on a Summer Morning" and "To Skin a Spy.") "Symphony" (a much better, more descriptive title than "The Corrupt") is a corker, the filmic equivalent of a book you can't put down, and had me staying up to an ungodly hour. There are none of the big stars Deray would go on to work with, and that's all to the good, as you've no idea which (if any!) of the five crooks will survive the massacre, and the alphabetical billing doesn't help you guess. The very clever screenplay is by Deray and two other master crime film directors, Claude Sautet and Jose Giovanni, with the latter playing one of the five crooks. Jean Rochefort hadn't yet achieved stardom as a likable comedy actor, but is very much the lead, though Vanel, Auclair and Dauphin had all been around longer and were bigger at the time. His character is definitely corrupt, and his betrayal of his old friends leads to an accumulation of corpses worthy of a Jacobean tragedy. All the acting is excellent, including that of Michele Mercier, but I still can't face the "Angelique" series. Seeing France as it was in the early 60s is fascinating (fine photography by Claude Renoir.) Though the main characters are all crooks, the French were obviously very law-abiding then, as nobody seems to lock their home or car. If someone had stolen Rochefort's car at Lyon station his cunning scheme would have failed. Great stuff.