Customer Reviews

Man on the Eiffel Tower

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

With this being a very difficult movie to get a hold of, I was thrilled it was getting a DVD release. Now I know why the price tag is so low on it.

I have seen better transfers of films from UHF TV stations in the middle of the night. It is grainy beyond belief, with a scratchy distorted soundtrack, and has so many splices in parts it makes it laughable. (remember those BBC 'Benny Hill' sketches with "Cheapo Films" when the splices in the film distorted the scene you were viewing ? This is what we are talking about here, folks....) Making matters worse, the colors are so badly faded it resembles a black & white film. Night sequences turn blue, skin tones turn yellow, whites turn light tan/bone....you get the point.

GOTHAM DISTRIBUTION should be ashamed of themselves for ever allowing a product this poor to be released to the general public. I realize they think a $7-8 price tag is reasonable enough...I, personally, wouldn't pay more than 99 cents. Its barely worth that alone. I will never purchase anything by GOTHAM Distribution again. What a joke !

This gem of a movie deserves better fate.

Simenon's seminal sleuth, Maigret, was never better enacted than by the shrewd, slow and sure Charles Laughton who is after a thrill-killer-for-hire Franchot Tone. Tone's portrait of a psychopathic murderer, who enjoys killing because it feeds his warped ego is fascinating. When the nephew of a rich woman hires Tone to kill his aunt and Laughton investigates. A very clever game of cat-and-mouse ensues. The acting is truly outstanding in this film: Tone actually and triumphantly overcomes Laughton's masterful mannerisms in their scenes together. The viewer is treated to a majestic Paris while we slowly engage in the thrilling story and the superb chase on the Eiffel Tower is uniquely exciting. Burgess Merideth (!) was the director, and he did an admirable job. The music score by Michel Michelet is exeptional.

I bought this in VCR @ around $6. The tape is god afull! I have reordered it in VCR @14.99 & hopefully the picture will not blank out every few seconds. As for the DVD, I read the review on it, & it appears this title needs a reissue by someone with a mint copy from the Studio. My $6 copy was from Alpha Video Distributorsin NJ. They ought to be ashamed of releasing such a lousy copy for sale at any price. This is not worth a wooden nickle.

The Man on the Eiffel Tower is an odd failure of a movie. It's disjointed, has no sympathetic characters except Inspector Maigret and his cops, features an overbearing music score and relies heavily on scenic Paris to maintain interest. What I find intriguing is the work of the three lead actors, Charles Laughton, Franchot Tone and Burgess Meredith, especially Tone. The story itself picks up steam in the last half, and the final chase, through the iron structure of the Eiffel Tower, is fascinating and suspenseful. While elements of the plot are discussed below, everything is known to the viewer within the first 15 minutes.

It's Paris in the late Forties. A young man (Robert Hutton), with his wife (Patricia Roc) and his girl friend (Jean Wallace), is overheard in a bar bemoaning how long it will most likely take before his rich aunt dies and he will inherit a great deal of money. A few days later the aunt is stabbed to death. It's clear that the nephew and the man who overheard his conversation made an agreement. By chance a poor sharpener of knives, Joseph Huertin (Burgess Meredith), almost blind even when he is wearing his thick eyeglasses, burgled the mansion the same night of the killing. He discovered the bodies (the aunt's maid had been killed, too), bloodied his hands and met the murderer, whom he could not recognize. Huertin is caught, but police inspector Jules Maigret doesn't believe he did it. What follows is a cat and mouse game between Maigret and a former medical student, a clever, often charming psychopath named Johan Radek (Franchot Tone). As one of his former professors tells Maigret, "Radek had a remarkable flair for sensing the weaknesses of others." Maigret slowly lays traps for Radek, and Radek taunts and leads Maigret on. The climax is the chase up the Eiffel Tower, with Radek climbing through the iron superstructure, followed by Huertin, with Maigret ascending by the cable-pulled passenger car.

The city of Paris plays an important role in this movie. It was shot on location, and the film is stuffed with visions of the city, from the Cafe Les Deux Maggots, reputed to be the oldest cafe in the city, where much of the plot bubbles, to the elegant Hotel George V, from the Champs-Elyses to the Seine to narrow streets and rooftops. It's a fascinating look at the city, made even more appealing now by the absence of crushing traffic. The interior of the Eiffel Tower becomes an iron maze of trusses, beams and open stair steps.

Laughton plays Maigret as perhaps too avuncular, but his Maigret is just as clever and shrewd as the original. Meredith's role as the nearly blind Huertin is probably less sympathetic than was intended. The character is simply too dull-witted to feel much empathy toward. Tone, on the other hand, plays Radek with great unbalanced charm. He buys Maigret lunch one afternoon at the restaurant atop the Eiffel Tower to preen in his cleverness. Tone manages to combine ego, menace and hysteria in one long monologue directed at Maigret. Franchot Tone has always seemed to me to be an underrated actor. He was a star in the Thirties but slipped steadily down throughout the Forties. His private life was often messy. Still, he could do more with less than most actors and was always, in my view, well worth watching.

The first half of the movie is contrived and disjointed, with Radek barely appearing. When a tense plot point looks as if it's going to be developed, more often that not an excuse for one more scenic chase through Paris arises. The second half of the movie, however, starts to cook. The duel between Radek and Maigret takes over, Maigret sets his traps and Radek's ego leads him to dangerously underestimate Maigret. The last 20 minutes are worth waiting for.

The Alpha Video is in bad shape. The film was shot in Ansco Color, which has degraded to the point where most every thing is sepia. The quality of the transfer is poor, with many flaws. The picture is soft and fuzzy. The audio is acceptable. There are no extras and only six chapter stops.

The film must have been a labor of love that didn't work out. Franchot Tone was the co-producer with Irving Allen, who was set to direct. He started filming, then Laughton demanded that Allen be replaced by Burgess Meredith, who then had Laughton direct the scenes in which Meredith appeared. After the movie failed at the box office, Allen bought the rights and buried the film for years. While The Man on the Eiffel Tower is not a successful film, it has much to enjoy. It deserves a better release than it got from Alpha Video.

When Bill Kirby (played by Robert Hutton) muses out loud that he would gladly pay someone a million francs to murder his rich aunt, he little realizes that someone has overheard and accepts the offer. Soon, events take on a life of their own, as the aunt is murdered and a fall guy (Burgess Meredith) is set up to take the blame. However, Inspector Jules Maigret (Charles Laughton) is on the case, and he soon realizes that he will have to dig deep to get to the bottom of this case...and he does!

In 1950, actor Burgess Meredith directed this, his one and only movie. This movie is a film adaptation of Georges Simenon's A Battle of Nerves, and is quite interesting. Veteran actor Charles Laughton makes a very interesting Maigret, and the story is quite gripping. I enjoyed the scenes of post-WW2 Paris, and loved the movie.

On the down-side, this movie definitely shows its age. There are skips in the movie, marking lost pieces of film, and the color is washed out and in terrible need of remastering. But, that said, this is an interesting movie, and a great detective story (but, alas, no mystery, you quickly find out who the real murderer was).

I would highly recommend this movie to all fans of Charles Laughton, Commissaire Maigret, or of great old movies. I loved this movie, and am very glad that I bought it!

Burgess Meredith, of all people, directed this oddball thriller, which features Franchot Tone as an ice-cool (but quite deranged) criminal mastermind who secretly yearns to be caught, and taunts a Parisian detective, Inspector Maigret (Charles Laughton) into hounding him. The moodiness of the film's beginning is undercut by the implausibility and uneven direction of the cat-and-mouse machinations of the second half; Laughton's character loses steam and while Tone delivers some choice moments eye-bulging insanity, it's had to make heads or tails out of his overly-explicit taunts of Maigret's faltering investigation. Sort of a lesser version of "The Third Man," with a resplendid mid-century Paris in place of a war-torn Vienna. Nice look at the inner workings of the Eiffel Tower as well... An interesting early adaptation of mystery novelist George Simenon's Maigret character, but ultimately a fairly shaky film.

I bought this as a gift for actor/producer/storyteller Ewing "Lucky" Brown who told me he enjoyed it very much. He had tried for years to locate it for his friend "Buzzy" (Burgess Meredith, who directed and acted in it)but was never able to find it for him during his lifetime. Both he and Charles Laughton felt it was their most enjoyable experience in working on a film.

[...]

"The Man on the Eiffel Tower", one of two films directed by superb actor Burgess Meredith who also starred in it, considering the accomplished cast was a colossal failure. Not only was the film transfer awful, but the sophomoric, disjointed plot was only saved by the footage shot around Paris.

Impatient heir Bill Kirby played by Robert Hutton wishes his rich aunt dead so he can inherit the funds to dump his wife to be with his mistress. His conversation is overheard by ham actor Franchot Tone playing boisterous, psychopathic and penniless medical student Johann Radek. Tone conspires to murder the aunt and poor knife grinder Joseph Heurtin who is also a part time bungling burglar stumbles into the murder scene and gets implicated.

The esteemed Charles Laughton's talents are wasted in his role as police Inspector Maigret who is taunted by Tone as he conducts his investigation into the murder. The tepid drama concludes with a chase scene on the steel girders of the Eiffel Tower, which was the highlight of a mostly poor effort.