#643: Landru
Even monsters can be charming
Initial release: January 25, 1963
Director: Claude Chabrol
History is littered with monsters hiding in plain sight. It’s not the raving lunatic we should be most scared of, but the charming, suave bastard, the one who knows just what to say and how to say it, and who to say it to. The grifters and the confidence men. They are everything from politicians to CEOs to entrepreneurs. They are men like H. H. Holmes and Ted Bundy. They are men like Henri Désiré Landru, the subject of French New Wave director and film critic Claud Chabrol’s Landru.
Better known in the United States as Bluebeard (a title that tells the audience everything they need to know about the film), Landru purports to detail the crimes, trial and execution of its title character, a smooth-talking conman who, during the Great War and shortly after, murdered at least ten women and one child as part of a scheme to attract the affections of lonely women, get them to sign over their money, then murder them and cash out at the bank. While the film kinda glosses over some of the facts of the case, the basic premise is clear.
The one thing that most defines Chabrol’s film is being tonally inconsistent. At times, it tries to be serious, particularly when Landru argues with his wife, or during the lengthy trial chapter; other times, it borders on farcical, even comedic — Landru (played by accomplished French actor Charles Denner) sometimes is played off as a somewhat bumbling villain, like if Pepe Le Pew was Jack the Ripper. In a very real sense, Landru is the kind of film that exemplifies the early 1960s in French filmmaking: more art piece, a train of thought, than anything coherent. Its pacing is all over the place as well, with the middle sequence of the film playing host to several montage sequences as Landru romances women then incinerates their corpses.
Perhaps to emphasize the less serious nature of this film, the murders are never, ever portrayed — instead, the camera freezes on the last frame one of Landru’s victims appears in, the music swells, then we cut to a chimney putting out copious amounts of black smoke and the neighbors grumpily closing the window to keep out the charnel house smell. The war barely factors into the film, instead always lurking beneath the surface, until the passage of time dictates that we get a shot of actual wartime footage, in poor shape and in the typical sped-up fashion of film of the era, set to bombastic jazz music.
One thing I’ll give Chambrol’s film is that it’s got some interesting cinematography and editing. One notable scene is when the prosecutor is making his final remarks to the court; he’s undoubtedly the best actor in the movie, which makes up for the brevity of his role, but the editing in this scene is snappy and clever, his final words punctuated by repeated cuts to a closer and closer camera. It’s a powerful scene, uniquely situated towards the end of a movie that has been unclear of what kind of movie it wants to be.
Landru is an oddball of a film, no doubt; the way it treats its subject matter is troubling at best (though I suppose there’s worse — I’ve seen Edge of Sanity!) It’s got a little bit of everything in it, from slapstick to political intrigue (the French government chooses to use the trial as a distraction from peace treaty woes.) And in all fairness, it does a pretty good job of showing how some slick customer can lure in the naive and lonely. Ultimately, the best I can say for it is that for better or worse it’s a pretty good example of 1960s French filmmaking.
