Cécile is Dead
One of the most respected police investigators of Paris, his reputation has in some ways become a burden upon Commissaire Jules Maigret, sought after for trivial matters such as the concerns of Mademoiselle Cécile Pardon who lives alone with her wealthy invalid aunt, Madame Juliette Boynet, a nervous woman who is convinced that after she retires to bed each night there is an intruder in their apartment.
Nothing ever taken but furniture moved and the lingering smell of tobacco, Maigret suggests that at twenty-five she is too old to believe in ghosts, his focus instead on the remains of an unidentified woman found newly arrived in a boarding house, the windows open for all to see, strangled then decapitated, the head missing, but written on the mirror a name – Cécile.
Based on Georges Simenon’s novel published two years before featuring celebrated French detective Jules Maigret, here played for the second of three times by Albert Préjean, Cécile is Dead (Cécile est Morte!) was released in 1944, directed by The Devil’s Hand’s Maurice Tourneur, his final film shot under duress, difficult circumstances and financial constraints for German-controlled Continental Films, operating out of occupied France.
With Santa Relli as Cécile, unflatteringly Maigret and the Spinster in the translation of 1977, Germaine Kerjean as the tight-fisted Madame Boynet, treating her niece as a servant and refusing any assistance at all to her nephew, and Liliane Maigné and Jean Brochard as her next-door and downstairs neighbours, flirtatious and intrusive jeune fille Nouchi and solicitor Dandurand, the plot is tangled but somewhat reliant on coincidence.
At times feeling like Maigret is less investigating than allowing the riddle to solve itself while he sits back and puffs his pipe, the pace allows the more egregious oversights to pass unmentioned – why did the killer not dispose of the head more carefully, and how did the deceased manage to write a dying message whilst being strangled and decapitated? – but Cécile is entertaining fun regardless, particularly in the eccentric characters in their world of stairwells and shadows.
Making its UK debut, Cécile is Dead is restored and presented on Blu-ray as part of Eureka’s Masters of Cinema series supported by a commentary by crime cinema expert Sergio Angelini and the insights of film historians Christine Leteux on the background of the fraught production, circumstances as strange as the film itself, and Martin Hall on the varied interpretations of the enduring character of Jules Maigret.
Cécile is Dead will be available on Blu-ray from Eureka from Monday 18th May
