Peur sur la Ville (a.k.a. Fear Over the City; a.k.a. The Night Caller) (1975)

Directed by Henri Verneuil; produced by Jean-Paul Belmondo

A killer calling himself Minos (Adalberto-Maria Merli) is on the loose in Paris, first tormenting women with nightly telephone calls, and then killing them for their alleged depravity. Put on the case is Commissar Letellier (Jean-Paul Belmondo) and his team. Complicating the case is Letellier’s obsession with capturing a bank robber (Giovanni Cianfriglia), whose earlier escape led to the police officer’s disgrace. Despite Letellier’s lukewarm initial interest in Minos, he is soon determined to bring the murderer to justice.

In 1970s France, there was no more popular actor than Jean-Paul Belmondo and in this, one of his most popular movies, he shows why. Teamed with a director with whom he had worked previously, he produces a movie that, despite flaws, is an entertaining crime thriller with elements of American film noir and Italian giallo genres.

The story is probably the weakest aspect of Peur sur la Ville. It’s an ordinary tale of a lunatic on a spree, daring the police to catch him. Letellier’s character is the hard-driving, hard-boiled cop seen in about a thousand similar films, though, with a characteristically French take on the stereotype, Belmondo plays him as both almost light-hearted and dismissive, cynical and dedicated. In many respects, though, viewers will see very familiar traits, and nothing in the way of originality.

The script, by the director, is rather better than the story. Unlike some American films of the decade, the protagonist breaks the rules but does not show disrespect toward his superiors; indeed, his immediate chief (Jean Martin) is sharp, and knows how to push Letellier’s buttons to get him to do what is needed. There is no great trauma in the hero’s past that has damaged him, just dissatisfaction at his job prospects. Unusually, there is no love-interest; not quite.

The direction is good  - very good in action sequences – but seems almost as if it needed refinement or, perhaps, better editing. There is a relatively extended radio interview which is seen to provoke the killer to anger, but is too long and, really, unnecessary. The best sequence, a long pursuit, which becomes another pursuit, is by far the most exciting part of the film, and should have been worked into the climax. There are some memorable images, though, such as a deadly game of hide-and-seek among mannequins.

Though it would be inaccurate to write that Belmondo is the movie, or that another actor could not have been cast, he nevertheless brings a presence to the film that is compelling. He is very watchable. Certainly not conventionally handsome – as Humphrey Bogart was not – he manages to be convincingly attractive to women while likeable, or at least comradely, to men. Then there are the stunts. Belmondo performed his own, and these make the action sequences worth seeing. He dangles from a helicopter, drives a car from its passenger seat, runs along the roof of a speeding subway train and, in a scene that will make many palms sweat, chases the villain along roof-tops.

The music is a successful aspect of Peur sur la Ville. Composed by Ennio Morricone, it provides at times a driving pulse, at other times a discordant anxiety. I found it in way similar to his later score for The Untouchables. There are smaller items of interest, such as the differences between police procedure here and in American and British films. Instead of a partnership of two detectives, Lettelier leads a team (‘brigade’), though he works most closely with his deputy (Charles Denner). Watching Peur sur la Ville in French (a foreign film should never be seen in a dubbed version), one learns that Parisian junior police detectives called their chief ‘patron’. The City of Lights usually provides an excellent setting for a film, and this one is no different, though I have yet to determine whether one can see the Eiffel Tower from almost anywhere in Paris, or if the shots were decided by the availability of that background.

Peur sur la Ville has problems, some of which may not be such to French audiences, but is for the most part an involving police action flick starring an actor at the height of his career.