Customer Reviews

Monsieur Hire [VHS]

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I watched Monsieur Hire few years ago, and it has been a while since I've seen it again, but the impact that it has had on me lingers to this day, as one of the most chilling, disturbing drama/thrillers to come from France for a long time.
The film has been compared to Hitchcock, because Monsieur Hire keeps watching his sexy Neighbor, Sandrine Bonnaire from his window, voyeurism ala Rear Window, but I think the comparison is not totally justified.
Monsieur Hire, first and foremost is a character study of a very sad, misunderstood by all and very very lonely man. All the events that follow, up to the climatic ending, which I will not spoil, revolve around Monsieur Hire's character and failings as a human being and in society at large.
His obsession with Bonnaire is quite chilling, yet harmless. It is the love of a man who has closed himself to the world outside, and can only deal with his infatuation the only way he knows. And the sad thing about him, is the fact that his emotions are very transparent and lead to exploitation by some and hostility by many.
The success of the film is due of course to director Patrice Leconte..(he has made many other films, like Hairdresser's Husband, Rue de Plaisir, and Parfum D'Yvonne, but Monsieur Hire is still his best)..Sandrine Bonnaire, in the tradition of French actresses, is very intense and plays her character flawlessly..But all credit should go to Michel Blanc! What a revelation of an actor!!
Many have talked and written about Hoffman or DeNiro's acting methods, but one should really watch actors like Blanc to really appreciate 'method' acting! He is Monsieur Hire and Monsieur Hire is him. He does not play the character but is the character. He does not speak much, but his facial expressions speak volumes. There is a scene that I can never forget to this day. Blanc watching Bonnaire from his flat above. She is doing some ironing, and a thunder lights the dark night to reveal Blanc's face staring chillingly at her, with cold yet twistingly loving expression! What benefits the films as well, is its lenght. It is just over 80 mins, and the great talent of Leconte is to be able in this time to develop the characters, and the story without over analysis or sentimentality.
When the DVD market has been littered with so many unwatchable films along with the good and excellent, it is about time that this film gets its digital release to join the rank of the latter, and be appreciated as one of the most heartbreaking, chilling and sad films ever made.

MONSIEUR HIRE, directed by Patrice LeConte, is a flawless film, wining the French Film Critics' Award for Best Feature of 1990. The story, music, acting are all superb; yet the performance and very presence of Sandrine Bonnaire on the screen are quite extraordinary, establishing Mlle Bonnaire as one of the greatest actresses in film history. She has made 30 films and each one re- establishes her as possibly the greatest living actress. Sadly few of her films are available on video. MONSIEUR HIRE is a must-have video and can introduce the viewer to the incredible depth,range and beauty of Sandrine Bonnaire.

Shades of Hitchcock's "Rear Window" permeate this fascinating mystery which explores loneliness and betrayal. There is a surprise ending which I will not reveal but seems logical considering the motives of each character. The acting especially of Michel Blanc is exceptionally good. The story moves at a brisk pace, and you will not be bored. I hope this movie becomes available on DVD soon!

"They'll find the killer some day, but no one will ever hold her in his arms again."

Monsieur Hire is the perfect suspect. Nobody likes him. Conversations die away when he passes by. Children play tricks on him. He sleeps very little. He never uses the lights. He sits in the dark in his room. And he likes to watch... So, naturally, when a young girl is found murdered, Hire finds himself put under the microscope, both by the strange detective who regularly humiliates him in the course of his investigation and the girl he spies upon who suddenly confronts him, with very unexpected results.

Patrice Leconte's film is one of those remarkable career turnarounds that defy expectations. Best known at the time for his unashamedly populist French comedies, Monsieur Hire is the equivalent of the director of Adam Sandler films suddenly having a stab at The Girl With the Pearl Earring and actually getting it right. His adaptation of a half-remembered Georges Simenon novel (literally: when he finally got the rights, no-one could find a copy of the novel to work from!) works both as a spellbinding piece of pure filmmaking and an intriguing drama about the difference between watching and comprehending. Hire may think he knows almost everything about his neighbor Alice because he has watched her so closely, but seeing and understanding are not always the same thing, as he himself reveals when he tells one of the whores he visits the story of a popular old lady who fed the pigeons breadcrumbs: because of her kindly face, people never realised that in fact she was poisoning them.

Above all, it's a very sensual film. Not in any erotic sense, although there is a charge when Hire finally allows himself to touch another human being. Rather this is a film about seeing and smelling, the senses through which we first form judgements but which still allow us to keep our distance - and not just M. Hire himself. It's no accident that the film ends with everyone silently watching him, and with the camera pulling away from a figure who finally understands what really happened too late in a truly haunting image.

Sandrine Bonnaire does remarkably well in what could simply have been a cipher as the object of his attentions, pulling off the difficult scenes where she gets closer to Hire while still managing to remain a credible figure, but it's no slight on her to say that this is Michel Blanc's show. Lurking at the edge of the frame or isolated in the center of the image, the balding, almost expressionless Blanc's performance is a masterclass in control. Not merely physical control, but resisting the desire to make Hire in any way likeable or more accessible. There is no appeal to sentiment, no crack in the façade to let us in and recognise anything admirable or empathetic, no explanation or excuse for the way he is. As a character he remains strange and ill suited for the world of men and women. Even the possibility of love does not free him from his shell. And it's that very inaccessibility that ultimately makes him such a tragic figure. Hire is as dead as the murder victim, who the detective pointedly notes will never be touched again: he just happens to still be walking around.

On the surface, the film is equally controlled - Leconte and Patrick Dewolf's tight screenplay is spare and precise, but with enough room for director and actors to build on, while Ivan Maussion's unostentatious design and Denis Lenoir's restrained yet meticulous cinematography serve the characters perfectly. Even Michael Nyman's music rises above what was then his usual formulised mathematical masturbation to deliver something whose precisely formalized distance is absolutely right.

Still unavailable on DVD in the USA, Leconte's great use of the Scope frame is well preserved in Second Sight's sadly extras-free UK DVD, although the color seems slightly richer than the theatrical print I saw a few years ago (although that could just have been color fading). Hopefully a more ambitious DVD release with some special features will find its way to region 1 sooner rather than later.

At long last, 'Monsieur Hire' is available in DVD format. What took it so long? For European films fans like me, life is not as easy as it is for Hollywood movies fans. For this reason we are almost forced into relying on imported DVDs without English subtitles or old VHSs! However, here it is now - I'm very pleased to be able to appreciate this atmospheric film once again, but this time with a better picture and sound quality!

Obviously I'm not going to talk too much about the plot, but this is a beautiful but sad, passionate but profound French film. The Director is one of my favourites, Patrice Leconte, who also directed many other masterpieces, including 'Hairdresser's Husband', 'Le Parfum D'Yvonne' and 'Intimate Strangers (Confidences Trop Intimes)'. His photography, the choice of soundtracks, the timing between dialogues and the agony that often appears in the actors' faces, all make me feel I'm part of his films, and I can't keep watching them without taking a few deep sighs.

'Monsieur Hire' is the film in which Leconte, for the first time, worked with the main actress, Sandrine Bonnaire Intimate Strangers [DVD], who plays a beautiful as well as mysterious young woman, Alice. The love and affection that a local middle-aged tailor, played by Michel Blanc, feels for Alice, torments him as he can do nothing but watch her from his apartment window. He turns the light off and plays a record when he watches her, and this piece of music is from Brahms' Piano Quartet No. 1 in G Minor IV (with Michael Nyman's arrangement), which creates further agonies in the viewer's chest. As he watches her, he realises that there is a serious secret in her life, which plays a major role in the relationship between the two people but nobody knows what she is really thinking - very clever. By this point, I was shaking my head, utterly engrossed, because I couldn't believe how incredibly Bonnaire and Blanc played their characters with so much emotion, even in the small expressions on their faces and their minimal body language - simply breathtaking! It'll be very difficult to take your eyes off the screen until the very end of the film, and I'm sure you'll love this amazing masterpiece of Leconte from 1989. Enjoy it!

"They'll find the killer some day, but no one will ever hold her in his arms again."

Monsieur Hire is the perfect suspect. Nobody likes him. Conversations die away when he passes by. Children play tricks on him. He sleeps very little. He never uses the lights. He sits in the dark in his room. And he likes to watch... So, naturally, when a young girl is found murdered, Hire finds himself put under the microscope, both by the strange detective who regularly humiliates him in the course of his investigation and the girl he spies upon who suddenly confronts him, with very unexpected results.

Patrice Leconte's film is one of those remarkable career turnarounds that defy expectations. Best known at the time for his unashamedly populist French comedies, Monsieur Hire is the equivalent of the director of Adam Sandler films suddenly having a stab at The Girl With the Pearl Earring and actually getting it right. His adaptation of a half-remembered Georges Simenon novel (literally: when he finally got the rights, no-one could find a copy of the novel to work from!) works both as a spellbinding piece of pure filmmaking and an intriguing drama about the difference between watching and comprehending. Hire may think he knows almost everything about his neighbor Alice because he has watched her so closely, but seeing and understanding are not always the same thing, as he himself reveals when he tells one of the whores he visits the story of a popular old lady who fed the pigeons breadcrumbs: because of her kindly face, people never realised that in fact she was poisoning them.

Above all, it's a very sensual film. Not in any erotic sense, although there is a charge when Hire finally allows himself to touch another human being. Rather this is a film about seeing and smelling, the senses through which we first form judgements but which still allow us to keep our distance - and not just M. Hire himself. It's no accident that the film ends with everyone silently watching him, and with the camera pulling away from a figure who finally understands what really happened too late in a truly haunting image.

Sandrine Bonnaire does remarkably well in what could simply have been a cipher as the object of his attentions, pulling off the difficult scenes where she gets closer to Hire while still managing to remain a credible figure, but it's no slight on her to say that this is Michel Blanc's show. Lurking at the edge of the frame or isolated in the center of the image, the balding, almost expressionless Blanc's performance is a masterclass in control. Not merely physical control, but resisting the desire to make Hire in any way likeable or more accessible. There is no appeal to sentiment, no crack in the façade to let us in and recognise anything admirable or empathetic, no explanation or excuse for the way he is. As a character he remains strange and ill suited for the world of men and women. Even the possibility of love does not free him from his shell. And it's that very inaccessibility that ultimately makes him such a tragic figure. Hire is as dead as the murder victim, who the detective pointedly notes will never be touched again: he just happens to still be walking around.

On the surface, the film is equally controlled - Leconte and Patrick Dewolf's tight screenplay is spare and precise, but with enough room for director and actors to build on, while Ivan Maussion's unostentatious design and Denis Lenoir's restrained yet meticulous cinematography serve the characters perfectly. Even Michael Nyman's music rises above what was then his usual formulised mathematical masturbation to deliver something whose precisely formalized distance is absolutely right.

Leconte's great use of the Scope frame is well preserved in Second Sight's sadly extras-free UK PAL DVD, although the color seems slightly richer than the theatrical print I saw a few years ago (although that could just have been color fading). Hopefully a more ambitious DVD release with some special features will find its way to region 1 sooner rather than later.

A voyeur (Michel Blanc), who spends all his spare time staring out his back window at his beautiful blonde neighbor (Sandrine Bonnaire), becomes the number one suspect of the police when a nasty murder occurs nearby. Then, when the neighbor discovers the voyeur and actually likes being watched by him, things really get kinky. Somehow, this sexually charged mystery movie got a PG-13 rating. It is all very Hitchcockian, full of tension, repression, and surprising plot twists. Based on the novel "Les Fiancailles de Monsieur Hire" by Georges Simenon, and directed by the always capable Patrice Leconte, this film proves to be an intriguing, if creepy, psychological study.

This is a perfect film, an hour and 17 minutes; not a single shot that could be removed and maintain the same impact. This film is emotionally moving, something significantly different than I had imagined. The cover art leads one to believe that this film is about eroticism. This couldn't be farther from the point of this film. It is a film that requires the viewer to pay attention, to view virtually every frame.

The film is more about love, obsession, and unrequited love. Sandrine Bonnaire is absolutely stunning in this film, and plays her role to perfection. Michel Blanc is wonderful as the stoic tailor, so well cast. The chemistry between these two actors is amazing.

The film seems to be much more like Fritz Lang's M - 2 Disc Special Edition - Criterion Collection. Michel Blanc looks a bit like Peter Lorre. The classical music he plays every time he's watching Alice, evokes the Pyr Gynt theme in M. The crowds gathered around, especially when the detective forces Monsieur Hire to reinact running with an overcoat, are so similar to the scenes in M. The comparison does fall short a bit with Alice, who is not a little girl.

The director, Patrice Leconte, has chosen so carefully all aspects of this film, down to the focal length of lens used for each shot. He uses a very wide angle lens that has barrel distortion during certain scenes on the street. All the crafts fully support all aspects of this film. Editing is spot on with perfect pacing. Every shot is in perfect focus, exposure is exactly right, sound is crystal clear.

The DVD has one bonus feature, an interview with the director. This two minute monologue is worth watching. The film is in French with English subtitles. The translation appears to be done reasonably well.

This is almost an R rated film. There is no nudity, but the situations are very sensuous. There was no foul language translated, there is no violence. The opening scene shows a dead body. A mature 15 or 16 year old might be able to watch this film.

This is a masterpiece film. Patrice Leconte is a brilliant director. Sandrine Bonnaire is remarkable and a pleasure to watch.

MONSIEUR HIRE is a small masterpiece of a thriller that has stood the passage of time very well. By allowing the characters to reveal themselves with subtlety and patience, and stressing their struggles (inner and outer) and their attempts to live with and liberate themselves from these struggles, rather than relying on setting and artifice, Patrice Leconte has removed the stifling effects of chronological and spatial imprisonment that mar so many otherwise well-made films. It has a contemporary feel, but the foundations of the story and the humans who populate it could easily be transplanted into any era - love, loneliness, the suspicion of anything / anyone different, guilt, and erotic obsession are all present here, manipulating, infecting and challenging their mortal carriers, driving them to consequences none of them could foresee.

Leconte wrote his script based on a 1933 Georges Simenon novel, filmed as PANIQUE in 1947 by Julien Duvivier. Rather than attempting a `remake' of Duvivier's film, he explains that his intention was to create `a new adaptation...a more personal work, expressing my own ideas...to express something that's very interesting to me, and troubling, which is erotic desire.'

The film opens with a scene that presages the voyeuristic aspects that will be developed more fully later on - the pale body of a young woman lies on the ground, almost in an attitude of peaceful sleep; a man - revealed as a police detective - looks down on her. We next see him sitting in her apartment, and hear his thoughts in a voiceover: `Pierrette died on her 22nd birthday. That's no age to die, people say...as though there were a right age.' He goes through her things, a type of post-mortem voyeurism in itself, and muses that `...no one will hold her in their arms again...', giving voice to the importance of touch, which will be repeated throughout the film.

Monsieur Hire is a lonely man in the deepest, most painful and desperate sense. Utterly alone, he occupies a small, neat, apartment. He is self-employed as a tailor, a solitary pursuit. His neighbours revile and distrust him - the children in his building make him the target of their taunts. Yet our first glimpse of him shows him extending kindness to one of them, his hand on the head of a little girl, gently directing her gaze toward a doorway, having her count to 30, in an attempt to rid her of a headache, or perhaps a fear, by distracting her. When she finishes counting, he removes his hand, comfortingly saying, `See...? All gone now.' He then walks away, headed to work. She looks after him with a gaze that is so unaffectedly childlike that it could not possibly be coaxed from a performer, a mixture of gratitude and unease - the man who has been the butt of so many pranks has shown her a moment of honest compassion.

His aching solitude finds an outlet in his furtive viewing of Alice (Sandrine Bonnaire), a beautiful young woman who lives in the building across the way. Rarely closing her curtains, she goes about her life unaware of his attention. She casually dresses and undresses, bathes, does her chores, and conducts a love affair with her fiancé Emile, all under Hire's steady gaze. It is only by a chance flash of lightning one night that she sees him in his window and realises she is being watched. Shocked and frightened at first, she becomes fascinated with this voyeuristic stranger, and sets up a situation through which the two of them meet face to face.

The detective investigating the murder turns his attentions early to Hire, his instincts aroused by the fact that the man is a loner, neither liked nor trusted by those who live around him. Hire discovers that he's under suspicion - the detective mentions the murder and the fact that a cab driver saw a man in a dark overcoat running toward Hire's apartment building. The tailor shows no emotion, then gets in a jab of his own - `It can't be easy to still be just a detective at your age.' The detective continues to question Hire frequently, both at the shop and apartment, sometimes brutally hounding and embarrassing him.

The friendship that grows between Alice and her voyeur is a strange one - her feelings of shock and danger seem to disappear rather quickly, and she admits enjoying being watched. The love that Hire has felt for her for some time grows even stronger - and while initially he attempts to remain emotionally aloof, he begins to let his feelings for her become known, a little at a time.

Her fiancé is apparently engaged in some sort of activity that has caused him to be under the gaze of the police...yet another type of voyeurism. The tension he feels under this scrutiny begins to cause emotional cracks to appear. As their relationship becomes less satisfying and more unpromising, Alice appears to rely more on Hire emotionally. He finds himself beginning to believe that the two of them might share a future together as the film comes to its climax.

More than simply presenting the story itself, the film invites the viewer to contemplate the fine line between love and obsession. Hire's voyeurism of Alice, while inarguably disturbing, is pursued by him with a pure heart and an almost meditative calmness. He is never seen stooping to physical self-gratification in relation to his voyeurism. This is an extremely complex character - the skill with which Michel Blanc fleshes out his part is immense. Sandrine Bonnaire, who has given many standout performances in her career (including her portrayal of the young vagrant in Agnès Varda's 1985 masterpiece VAGABOND) is absolutely perfect. Patrice Leconte has brought forth something very special in Monsieur Hire - a finely-crafted, intelligently written and well-acted thriller, to be sure...but a treasure of much deeper proportions that will reveal more and inspire more thought and contemplation with repeated viewings, even after the ending is known to an open-minded and appreciative audience.

It's been said that film, by its very nature, is a voyeuristic experience. We are, after all, not within the action itself; we're viewers who derive entertainment from the misery on screen, much like that of Schadenfreude. In "Monsieur Hire," we are, in a sense, voyeurs to a voyeur. As sexually-charged as the word may be, it is not sex that's at the forefront here, but rather the themes of aching loneliness and love, specifically the extent to which a person will go to assuage an emptiness that burrows deeply, as well as the injustices and alienation suffered by those who are merely different.

Monsieur Hire (Michel Blanc) is a loner who's hated by his neighbors and a constant target of pranks. An oddity who's avoided and gossiped about, he says only that the loathing stems from his refusal to socialize. (His full surname is Hirovitch. Could his being Jewish perhaps be the reason for the animosity? I don't know; I'm just guessing.) As reprieve from the dull routines of his tailoring business and the torment of his neighbors, M. Hire takes to watching a beautiful young woman in a flat across his. His nightly vigil consists of stoically watching her in the dark, fascinated by every movement she makes. It soon becomes clear that he's not motivated by perversion or prurience, but adoration that evolves into love.

Her name is Alice (Sandrine Bonnaire) and she accidentally discovers what M. Hire has been doing. Instead of reporting him to the police, she cultivates a relationship with him, and we are led to believe that Alice shares M. Hire's affections. But Alice is in love with a boyfriend who treats her shabbily and refuses to commit. When a murdered woman's body is discovered in the woods, M. Hire's neighbors single him out as the likely murderer despite the absence of evidence and motive. How his love for Alice is tested and how it ties in with the murder are best left unmentioned. Suffice to say that there's a clever twist to this story that takes one by surprise.

Based on a story by Belgian novelist Georges Simenon (creator of the Inspector Maigret series), "Monsieur Hire" is an understated and somber film that consistently refuses to provide easy answers. Instead, the viewer is forced to intuit, from one scene to the next, the feelings and motivations of its protagonists. The mystery or the whodunit seems only incidental to the narrative. I admire the film's artistry, from carefully set up shots that actually replace dialogue (in my opinion, much harder to achieve) to the smart script that slowly builds the story, luring me toward a startling end. However, despite the careful attention, I'm not sure I fully understood M. Hire and Alice to the degree I was meant to. Even now, as I'm recalling certain scenes, I'm not confident that I've interpreted them as they were intended and cannot determine if this was due to a failure on my part or the film's overall ambiguity. I'm straddling these two possibilities and giving it four stars.

(Language: French with English subtitles)