Last Known Address (1970)

Original title: Dernier domicile connu

Marceau Leonetti (Lino Ventura) is a violent cop but seems rather more thoughtful in his use of violence than most of his movie colleagues of the type. Probably, going by the rest of the movie, because he’s not using violence out of sadism or laziness – he is, in fact indefatigable at the grinding and plodding parts of police work, and I can’t help but suspect he’s using violence only when he deems it most efficient to get things done.

Somewhat ironically, Marceau finds himself demoted to a country office where stolen pigeons are apparently the most interesting case one can encounter for an act of violence he didn’t commit. That’s what you get when you arrest the son of an influential lawyer for a drunk driving incident, apparently.

Eventually, an old police acquaintance (Alain Mottet) asks him for help in a special investigation about the “pervert epidemic” that’s apparently gripping the nation’s cinemas. Leonetti is paired up with rookie Jeanne Dumas (Marlène Jobert) who has the tiring and undignified job of being his perv lure, and together, they’re rather great at this thing too. Because his old boss – quietly and behind closed doors – still trusts Leonetti very much indeed, this job leads to another, more interesting one: Leonetti and Dumas have only six days to find the only surviving witness to the murder committed by an influential gangster/businessman. Of course, said witness has evaded police and crooks alike for nearly five years now…

In the – mostly very positive – reviews for José Giovanni’s Last Known Address, you’ll predominantly find this praised as a bit of a hidden gem of French style noir. I certainly don’t disagree with these appraisals, though I do tend to think the 70s downer ending is a bit too rote and on the nose - in a very particular French way even with an appropriate literary quote to tie things up for all us cultivated viewers. The film certainly recommends itself with the fine chemistry between Jobert and the always wonderful Ventura who as so often does find true grace in an on paper minimal performance, and the kind of filmmaking by the (as a person more than a little dubious, unlike you really like Nazis and murder) Giovanni that’s spectacularly effective while seeming completely unspectacular.

All of which is all nice and good or even great. However, what I find utterly spellbinding about the film is its middle part, consisting of scene after scene after scene of plodding police investigation, where one clue leads to another clue leads to hope leads into nothing again and again and again. There’s nothing elegant, no terribly clever deductions at play here, instead, the film portrays investigative work, realistically, as a game of patience and endurance, of hitting the sidewalk and asking questions and getting unsatisfying answers, asking more questions and still getting nowhere, and looking through files for hours until total exhaustion sets in. For obvious reason, even the more realistic crime fiction seldom goes quite as far with this approach as the film at hand does by being okay with showing its protagonists doing boring, slow things for nearly an hour.

Yet somehow, this approach works incredibly well for Last Known Address, in part certainly because Ventura and Jobert clearly can make going through the phone book look somewhat interesting, but also because films simply don’t do this, turning what could be boring radically new and therefore interesting, at least to me.