The Strange Monsieur Victor

Raimu is many things. He's the loving husband of Madeleine Renaud and the father of their newborn son, he's a successful shop owner, he's well respected and connected throughout Toulon, he's a fence for a gang that have just robbed a castle and a church, and he's the murderer of one of the gang who tried to blackmail him. Not that anyone but the thieves know the last two, and the surviving thieves don't know the last. Everyone thinks that cobbler Pierre Blanchar is the murderer and he's sentenced to Devil's Island. And so seven years pass, and Blanchar escapes and returns hoping to see his son.

This movie has many nice touches, lots of performers who get a single name on the screen -- a mark, in France, of their renown, real or not -- some nice atmosphere, including a game of petanque, and a particularly good performance from Mlle Renaud. At its heart, though, it's a vehicle for Raimu, and he shows his enormous range in the first half hour, from clown to murderer. It is in the final hour of the movie that he comes to exemplify all the contradictions that make up human beings. There are not so many laughs in this part, even as Raimu makes up a tall tale to tell his wife. It's that sad clown mien that Raimu dons as he explains what's going on in his heart that I find so touching.