French Film Noir: “Noir Reckonings” Double Feature

In Marie X, an all-star cast (Danielle Darrieux, Lino Ventura, Bernard Blier, Serge Reggiani, Paul Meurisse and many more) brings to life a painful wartime incident that an extraordinary reunion fifteen years after the fact has been designed to resolve. Locked away from the world, the participants discover that the stakes grow higher and the details of the betrayal that cost the lives of their Resistance comrades begin to hit home, leading to a revelation and a final reckoning.

In No Exit, director Jacqueline Audry, one of only two female directors working in France during the 1950s, mostly specialized in Colette adaptations, but here she moves into an entirely different realm—from earthly passion to what we might term the “post-traumatic stress of reliving one’s death.” For that is what our three protagonists (Arletty, Frank Villard, Gaby Sylvia) are forced to do once they arrive in what at first appears to be a tastefully appointed room in an underground bunker. It takes awhile for the reality of their situation to sink in—and then each must endure not only their own reckonings but those of the damned souls who are to be their forced companions for eternity. See Arletty as you’ve never seen her!