Review: "Nude in a White Car"/Toi, le Venin/Nachts fällt der Schleier 1959. Nice

 I do not know much about Robert Hossein. I like his baguette-western UNE CORDE...UNE COLT / CEMETERY WITHOUT CROSSES and know that he was a prolific French actor and director, but basically, that's all. That might have to do with the fact that non-"progressive" filmmakers seem to be more likely to be forgotten by the film historians than their politically more active counterparts in some kind of retroactive cancellation. Well. Why not change it?

When this little movie arrived on my doorstep, I knew nothing about it either, except that it was a mystery and - well - directed by Hossein (see above). It had an old cert.18 censorship marker, which is intriguing.

So let's see. Of all the titles of the film, the US-American is the most honest. This is what the movie is actually about: A Nude Girl in a White Car. "You, the Venom", the French one, is just too ordinary and broad, and the German one, "At night, the veil comes down," is simply wrong, since there is no veil coming down, but a fur coat. But I have to admit that "Nachts fällt der Pelz" is very ridiculous.

The Story: Down and out TV-Poems reciter Hossein has just lost his job and is strolling aimlessly in the night alongside a road to the Mediterranean coast. A white Cadillac stops beside him. In it is a blonde girl with a fur coat. We don't see her face. She asks him if she can take him to the coast and he enters the car. She drives into the woods and takes the fur off. Nothing underneath. We see her body, but not her face. It is dark. She switches the radio on. A cool jazz number is being played. They have quick sex. Afterward, she switches the radio off and tells him to leave. He is not happy, so she points a gun at him and he finally gets out of the car and walks back to the road. On the way, the car chases him and tries to run him over. He can jump into safety and get the license plate.

He is able to find the holder of the car and can talk himself into the fancy coast-side villa that she inhabits. So he meets Sister #1, who is beautiful and very, very sweet and charming. Yes, she is blonde like the girl in the car, but something is odd- and he had not seen her face. Then Sister #2 enters in a wheelchair, and she is very, very sweet, charming, and helpless. Poor Robert. A complete saccharine overdose. The two look very much alike (for a quick second I was convinced it was the same actress, only to find out that they were actual sisters), and finding out that he is their adored TV-poems reciter without a job, they offer him one: to become the new manager for a chain of modern record stores they want to start.

Immediately they start intriguing and playing with each other, as both sisters want the same guy - or maybe one sister wants that guy so that the other sister cannot have him. As one is the care-taker and one is disabled, this is a "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?" situation. Only with really charming, well-educated, beautiful young women. 

Of course we know that Robert is in trouble. We have seen that the woman in question has a gun and has a homicidal streak. And the movie plays with us, raising the tension higher and higher. When Disabled Sister is found clothed in the garden at night, suspicion arises if she fakes it. But also whether not-disabled, athletic Sister #1 has drugged her and set this whole thing up. 

Things get more intense, and suspicions rise higher and higher as, obviously, our girl in question has the urge to drive away at night again and again. And then, the song that had been on the radio that night is being played over and over again. 

Who is it? And what will happen?

Yes. This is how you do it. The end, I have to say, could have been better, but the build-up and the performances by basically three actors only is very, very good. I yearn for little nuances that tell you who is the freaky sister, and of course you know your movies and have a suspicion right from the start, but Hossein does a fine job of equally balancing suspicious behavior between the two while continuously increasing the feeling of danger. I was very, very much entertained and happy to have seen this film.

It is based on the pulp-noir novel "C'est toi le venin" by Fréderic Dard that was published in 1957.

The two actresses are the sisters Marina Vlady (his wife at that time) and Odile Versois, and they had two more sisters who were acting. Marina, also a singer-songwriter, divorced Hossein after this movie and this might be a clue to why things go vile in here. She then got into a relationship with Russian singer-songwriter Vladimir Vysotsky, for whom she relocated to the USSR and became a member of the Communist Party, which did not prevent her from marrying rich French men and living a high-society lifestyle. She won a Berlinale Award for her acting in "The Sorceress" 1956

Absolutely recommended, this is a very tightly crafted noir drama that keeps you guessing and entertained every second of it.

Little is to be found about that movie, but one Wikipedia entry claims that it was successful. This is definitively a keeper. There is a nice BD in France out there. I am tempted.