Portrait of a Killer (1949) User Reviews

Let me ride on the wall of death one more time....

[dbdumonteil · 7/10 · 1 July 2006]

...You can waste your time on the other rides

But this is the nearest to being alive

Oh let me take my chances on the wall of death .

(Richard Thompson)

This is a mysterious film.The precedent user was cross cause they did not mention Maria Montez's name on the DVD or video cassette release.He must realize that it's aimed at the French market and in France ,who remembers this beautiful but limited (at least to my eyes)actress?

The French cast is a dream:first it was Arletty's comeback;after the problems she had in 1945,and the unfinished Carné's "la Fleur de l'Age,it was the first film she had made since "les Enfants du Paradis".The male cast is exciting too:Erich Von Stroheim,and two other Carné's favorites ,Pierre Brasseur and Jules Berry.

The subject is original.Brasseur portrays a stunt-man who rides his motorbike on the wall of death .He's married to Martha whose love is strong and true but he has come to hate her:he tries to kill her in the first sequence! But Martha forgives and she delivers a wonderful line"For once,the victim also provides the alibi".

Enter manager Montez:she wants the acrobat to work on a larger scale and she asks an engineer (Marcel Dalio ,who was in "la règle du jeu" and "Casablanca" )to build a huge track where the man will perform a terrifying looping the loop.

The script lacks sometimes rigor and Von Stroheim's character -a disabled man ,after working for Montez- repeats more or less the same lines every time he appears.On the other hand, Bernard-Roland perfectly captured the fair/circus atmosphere.He even hired the Fratellinis ,a famous clowns family.

Probably influenced by Carné and Duvivier,the director continued the Realisme Poétique of the pré-war years and its pessimism .He could have been a heir to that tradition,as contemporary Yves Allégret was.But he essentially worked for TV.

Carne' At The Carney

[writers_reign · 8/10 · 17 November 2006]

This movie opens with the epitome of Noir; EXT. Street. Night. Rain lashing down, light dappling the cobbles. A woman walking away from camera. Cut to: Man waiting up ahead. He takes out a gun as the woman approaches and puts a slug where it will do the most good. The woman crumples the man walks away. We stay with him as he enters a Carney and makes for a trailer attached to Le Mur de morte, the Wall of Death. If you shot something like that today you'd probably be satirising Noir but in 1949 it was right on the money. That Wall of Death link pegs the time with almost pin-point accuracy because in the immediate post-war years ex-servicemen were eking out livings riding motor bikes up and down the walls of small enclosed circular arenas as the crowds waited for them to get it wrong - one of the three main characters in Nevil Shute's novel The Chequeur Board takes it up and the novel was published in 1947, a few years later the game was finished. The man with the gun made no attempt to conceal his identity and we recognise leading man Pierre Brasseur, but there's something wrong here, Brasseur wasn't leading man material; his face shouted 'heavy' and he was right at home as the gangster humiliated by Jean Gabin in Quai des Brumes, who later shoots Gabin in the back, he wasn't much nicer as Frederic Lemaitre in Les Enfants du paradis - both Marcel Carne movies - and even his JoJo in Porte des Lilas wasn't that simon pure. So, where were we, oh yes, Fabius (Brasseur) begins to pack when his wife Martha (Arletty) comes in. He's a little nonplussed given that he's just killed her but she's the forgiving sort and he agrees to keep on riding. Now top-billed actress Maria Montez enters the picture as an impresario interested in promoting Fabius as the star of a circus owned by Jules Berry. This involves him performing a loop-the-loop in a specially designed car after hurtling down a ramp designed by Marcel Dalio - YEAH, it IS a great cast if we don't count Montez and I STILL haven't mentioned Eric Von Stroheim as a badly disfigured ex-stuntman employed by Montez. Henri Decoin - no mean director himself - and the brilliant Charles Spaak weigh in with a classy script and you're in for a swell time if you catch this. For me the selling point had to be Arletty in her first film since Les Enfants du paradis four years earlier. They didn't do right by our Bess; accused of collaborating - she had an open relationship with a German officer during the war but that's a long way from collaboration - she was arrested at Carne's house and not allowed to attend the premiere of Les Enfants or work again for a while. It's not for me, a non-Frenchman who wasn't around at the time, to discuss French policies on sensitive issues but as a lover of French Cinema perhaps I can wonder out loud what Great performances have possibly been lost by that Greatest of French actresses in those years between 1945 and her return here in 1949. The price she paid is clearly etched on her face but she still acts joke 'actress' Montez off the screen.

Looping the loop.

[brogmiller · 7/10 · 27 June 2021]

I must confess that I am unfamiliar with the work of director Bernard-Roland and was drawn to this purely by the tantalising cast list. Maria Montez would hardly be likely to win any kudos for her dramatic skills but she is well cast here and relishes her role. What can one possibly say about Brasseur, von Stroheim, Berry and Dalio? Consummate professionals all and blessed with that indefinable something extra. As a further bonus we have the mesmerising Arletty, indisputably one of her nation's greatest stars. Things could never be quite the same for her after the War for reasons that have been well documented but she never ceased to be great value, whatever her material.

This is a truly bizarre opus but absolutely riveting thanks to Bernard-Roland's taut direction, the score by Maurice Thiriet, cinematographer Roger Hubert's 'noirish' touches and of course its charismatic players.

My God She Really Could Act!

[foxfyreangel · 10/10 · 8 July 2002]

I FINALLY got my DVD of Portrait of an Assasin today. It took a little longer than anticipated but it was well worth the wait.

This movie proves Maria Montez could act quite well, given the proper venue. Though in french, I enjoyed it thoroughly. It would have been nice had the actors had done an english version......not just dubbed by anyone. But alas it was not! Hearing Maria do french was interesting. Though handled well, you could tell it wasn't her native tongue. Unlike the French actors, she enuciated her lines so they were understandable. Personally I think the reason Maria had such a problem with her acting in her english movies is that she (undoubtly at the request of the studio) had to re-aquire her spanish accent, which she had lost years prior........Yes Virginia, Maria was faking her own accent!!!

I find it peculiar how there seems to be a problem with Maria character's name. Even the DVD cover mistakenly listed it as Catherine. Doesn't anyone ever actually view the movies before writing stuff about it?

Now Speaking of the DVD cover. WHY did they put Maria on the back of it instead of the front? She was first billed in the actual movie credits. To add insult to injury they took 2 of the supporting actors, Arletty & Von Stronheim and gave them the billing on the cover like they were the stars of it when they were NOT.........So What is up with this thing about not putting Maria on the cover of her own movies???? Arabian Nights was like this also.

There's a bit of trivia that you might find interesting about this movie. Henri Decoin wrote this movie and went on to direct L'Affaire des Poisons in 1955. A movie about Catherine DeShayes the Satanic High Priestess of 17th century Paris. It looks like the pinkie Ring Arletty was wearing thoughout the movie may have been a special one belonging to Miss DeShayes. And it is said that Maria became the owner of it after the movie was done shooting.

French melodrama, and don't offer Maria Montez a ride on your motorcycle

[Terrell-4 · 4/10 · 12 June 2008]

Maria Montez, a sultry temptress who achieved fame in the Forties, was no better an actress in French than she was in English. During WWII, garbed in wisps of gauze and wearing tons of flashy jewels, she undulated her way through a series of highly popular flying-carpet adventures filmed in Technicolor and co-starring the likes of Jon Hall and Turhan Bey. When WWII ended her Hollywood days gradually came to a close. By 1949 she and her French husband, Jean-Pierre Aumont, had settled in France. Montez made six films in France and Italy before dying in 1951 at age 39. She had a heart attack while bathing and drowned in her bathtub. Nowadays, I suppose, she is mainly remembered because of her popularity among men who like to dress up and pretend they're Judy Garland, Carol Channing and...Maria Montez.

This French drama is ripe to the bone. The storyline -- a man lured to his doom by a heartless woman -- is older than a bag of moldy croissants. In an odd way, it's sort of fascinating to watch because of the overwrought melodrama the director, a fellow with two names who liked to be billed as one name, Bernard-Roland, pours over the proceedings. The result is 86 minutes of what we presume Bernard-Roland thought was French existential angst. There's the same inevitability we see with an over-confident carpenter who hits his finger several times with a hammer. The movie isn't much good, but it's oddly watchable.

Montez plays Christina de Rinck, the beautiful, cool owner/manager of circus acts. She specializes in the dangerous ones that feature handsome men. Pierre Brasseur plays Fabius, billed as Fabius the Great, who runs his motorcycle around the walls in a wooden circle, faster and faster, with paying circus rubes watching over the top to see if he makes it. One night, hating and fearing his job, he shoots a woman he thinks is his wife, Martha (played by Arletty). Why his wife? Because it enables the plot to bring him into contact with Christina, the woman he wings by mistake. It turns out Christina is the queen black widow of that peculiar type of circus manager who loves her men to do increasingly dangerous things, especially when they die doing them. It's not long before Martha is really worried, before Christina has shamed Fabius into trying a new act, and before the infamous, gravity-defying Double Loop is ready for a high society performance debut. Lurking about is Erich von Stroheim as one of Christina's former lovers who barely survived the experience. He lays out prophesies of doom and walks in a disturbing corkscrew manner, encased in a steel vest from throat to navel. Be prepared for what Bernard-Roland considers justice from the Gods of melodrama.

Portrait of an Assassin has a few good things. Pierre Brasseur, who ten years later would play Doctor Génessier in Eyes Without a Face, gradually overcomes the conventionalities of the script and does a nice job as the doomed Pierre. Maria Montez, still looking great if a little matronly, does no harm as the doomed Christina. Most of all there's Arletty as the doomed Martha. It's a thankless role, yet we watch her every time she's in a scene. With her pale, smooth face, her high hairline and her dense, black, short hairdo, she looks like something out of Kabuki by way of Willie Wonka. Arletty was a great French actress who was accused of horizontal collaboration in occupied France. She took a German officer as a lover. After the Germans left Paris, she was sentenced to 120 days in jail and forbidden to act for nearly three years.

Dull, dull, dull....until a spectacular final stunt

[gridoon2024 · 4/10 · 15 June 2023]

"Portrait d'un Assassin" has a gripping start (a man shoots a woman walking alone in an empty, rainy street) and an interesting multinational cast (with Maria Montez and Erich Von Stroheim speaking perfect French). Soon, however, it collapses under an excess of talk: instead of the crime picture the title promises, this is more like an early version of Burt Reynolds' "Hooper"! (only not half as much fun). It's a very disappointing film, although the final stunt IS truly spectacular and you may be tempted to play it in slow motion to take it all in. IF you have stuck around for that long, of course. *1/2 out of 4.