Witness in the City (1959)

Original title: Un témoin dans la ville

Pierre Verdier (Jacques Berthier) throws his lover Jeanne (Françoise Brion) out of a train. Everybody in the justice system is pretty clear that he murdered her, but there’s simply no proof to actually convict him, so he walks. Verdier isn’t really scot free, though, for when he triumphantly at his home, Jeanne’s husband Ancelin (Lino Ventura) awaits, and Ancelin has plans to shorten Verdier’s life considerably.

Ancelin isn’t just going to murder Verdier, though, he’s also hellbent on getting away with it in one of those perfect murder constructions that never work out in the end. He does manage to kill Verdier as he has planned, at least, but when a cab driver sees him coming out of the house, and Ancelin realizes this, there are greater lengths he needs to go to if he wants to stay free. And if that means committing another murder or two, what of it?

There’s rather a lot to like about this noirish thriller by Édouard Molinaro with a script by Boileau and Narcejac (of Les Diaboliques fame, among many others) and diverse hands. The first impression is one of a film of considerable economy: Jeanne dies in the first scene, Verdier gets off in the next, and is dead before twenty minutes are through. There’s really no fat on the film’s first act whatsoever yet it never feels as if were leaving out anything of actual import or necessity to its plot.

The rest of the film never stays quite this tight, but it still introduces characters and situations with just the right amount of detail, never staying anywhere or with anyone for longer than it needs to, building tension through a relentless forward momentum, Which is a particularly wonderful effect when one keeps in mind that there’s not actually all that much happening here plot-wise beyond an increasingly panicked Ancelin trying to correct mistakes and only making his problem larger again and again. The portrayal of this is just so tight and focussed a viewer can’t help but be drawn in.

The film also recommends itself by taking place in wonderfully shot often empty city streets at night, streets that are only populated by night people – all kinds of workers, be it in sex or transportation, mostly. This lends Witness an effective sense of place, a certain desolation, but one that is, in the end, also broken and humanized by the comradery of the night people once they realize a threat is there. The climax plays out as a minor homage to Lang’s M, though it never reaches, never aims for, really, that film’s particular kind of darkness. France in the late 50s isn’t, after all, the Weimar Republic shortly before the end.

Another fascinating element is the treatment of Ancelin, its actual protagonist, how it slowly shifts the audience’s sympathies away from him once we realize how far he is willing to go to get off as free as Verdier thought he did. A man killing the murderer of his wife, we can understand, perhaps even sympathize with, but Ancelin’s ruthless willingness when it comes to destroying whoever gets in his way is quite another thing; which may be a point the film is attempting to make towards the problems with vigilantism. Ventura’s portrayal of a man whose mask of calm and collectedness is increasingly slipping is brilliant in any case.