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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Black Comedy Noir, January 9, 2006
Coup de Torchon is an extremely well-made film. Noiret's acting as the lead is stellar. I haven't read the Jim Thompson novel on which the film is based (in fact it's one of the few Thompson novels I haven't read), so I honestly can't say how similar or dissimilar the film is from its source material. Standing on its own, however, Coup de Torchon is extremely effective and very unsettling.
The main character, brilliantly played by Noiret, is bullied by everyone around him. He is bumbling, passive, and foolish. Everyone takes advantage of him, makes a fool of him, and expects him to take it. He gets fed up and starts doing something about it. At first it seems he is merely going to exact revenge, sort of like the character in Romero's Bruiser. He then goes beyond this, becoming convinced that the world is so cruel and inhumane that to murder people is almost to do them a favor. He is crafty in his revenge, to be sure. It turns out that this bumbling, silly man is capable of diabolic, calculated, ingenious cruelty. He frames others around him, manipulates those in his environment, and turns foe against foe, all while still acting as though he's the same bumbling fool. No one would ever expect him. Why? Because he seems so dumb he almost has a childlike innocence about him. Noiret's character looks around him and sees nothing but silent and unsilent suffering. He thinks that the common belief that murder is the worst of crimes is a bald-faced falsity. People are regularly so cruel, so inhumane, and so monstrous to one another, that killing is by comparison a petty offense. Best line of the film: "If man was really made in God's image, then I wouldn't want to meet God in a dark alley."
All of the performances in Coup de Torchon are excellent, but Noiret and Isabelle Huppert, as his naïve lover, steal the show. We are left to speculate why Noiret's character snaps. This is not a flaw with the film, however. Why does anyone ever snap? Do we really ever know? No. What we do know is that Noiret's character is a time bomb that has gone off. He becomes, technically, a serial killer, but like the killer in The Minus Man, you'll find yourself oddly sympathyzing with him, even, and this is the morbid genious of the film, cheering him on! Noiret's character sees himself as a savior of sorts. He seems to have a Christ complex, but not of the usual type. He does not want to martyr himself. He says he is Christ returned, with a cross for every person, here to save the innocent. The catch is that he finds that no one is in fact innocent. Either by acts of commission or by crimes of omission, everyone is guilty. The out-and-out racism in the film is a device used by the director to illustrate this. The way that all of the white characters treat the black characters in this film is despicable and disgusting. Notice that even those who do not directly abuse the blacks nevertheless complacently allow it to happen all around them. When Noiret kills the black man it is because he sucked up to white men; he kissed their butts. He, in other words, allowed cruelty to blacks to occur by making it okay, by befriending the very people who were committing such societal crimes. Thus everyone is guilty by sheer virtue of their complicity. Even the blacks. The film opens with Noiret starting a fire to warm some cold African children. The film ends with him pointing his revolver at them. Perhaps he is going to put them out of their misery. Regardless, he is going to kill them. He has become convinced that the guilty must die and that all are guilty. One wonders if he'll turn the gun on himself, for he is just as guilty as anyone. As sheriff, when he saw a crime being committed in public, he would just let it occur. He too is guilty by complicity.
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11 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
understated excellence, April 2, 2001
This is the best film adaptation of Jim Thompson to date, and a marvellous film beside that fact. Tavernier knows the book throughout but doesn't bow to it; he builds his own movie out of the story filling it with character and nuance. He doesn't cop out like Peckinpah, or try to be too clever - he makes a classic film that works, not because he builds on convention, but because he makes it all his own. The actors, especially Noiret, appear to be thoroughly enjoying the filming and provide us with sly performances that don't knock you over only because they are too subtle for that. Truly a wonderful film, startling in its bursts of violence and in its understated black humor. Pay attention and the rewards will be many.
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18 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
TERMINATORIX, April 11, 2001
When they are on location, film directors usually tend to forget the actors in order to become for a while only still photographers. If James Bond is in Paris, one can be sure to enjoy a free guided tour of the city including the Eiffel Tower, Les Champs-Elysées and l'Arc de Triomphe. So, when one reads that the story of french director Bertrand Tavernier's COUP DE TORCHON is happening in the French West Africa of 1938, wild images begin to fly through the movie lover's anxious mind : elephants, lions, snakes, Tarzan, glorious sunsets and other african clichés suddenly make their appearance in front of his very eyes. But amateurs of touristic trips will be very disappointed with Tavernier's use of african landscapes. The director is even playing with us in the scene involving the french rock singer Eddy NONO Mitchell standing on his bed because something is moving under his bed. We are all waiting for a snake, a scorpion or a colourful spider to burst out while the dangerous animal is finally described as a vulgar night butterfly that the director doesn't even judge necessary to show to the audience. Bertrand Tavernier is not following the usual codes of the genre and is saying it. In fact, Bertrand Tavernier doesn't follow any codes in COUP DE TORCHON. The main character, Philippe LUCIEN CORDIER Noiret, is presented as a weak corrupted policeman despised by the local bad boys. Once he has earned a bit of our sympathy, he turns into a machiavelic no-law madman driven by revenge. The last scene of COUP DE TORCHON deserves to stay in movie history : Philippe Noiret, by the sole power of his eyes and gestures, makes us understand that he has become completely mad. So why Africa ? For its strange atmosphere, for its heat, for its colours. Bertrand Tavernier explains it very clearly during the interview you will find as extra-feature with this Criterion release. An alternate ending, not very convincing, is also presented as well as the american trailer of this 1981 movie which, in my opinion, is a masterpiece. A DVD for your library.
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