A Man's Head

Willy Ferrière, out of money and living on debt, says out loud in a Montparnasse café that he would give a hundred thousand francs to be rid of his wealthy aunt. Somebody hears him and takes the offer. The old woman is killed and the crime is pinned on a man who is easy to blame. Inspector Maigret senses that something is wrong. Julien Duvivier directed the film from a novel by Georges Simenon, with Harry Baur as Maigret. The telling gives away who did the killing early on; the tension comes not from the catching but from how Maigret breaks the man in front of him. The Paris of the thirties appears in real locations. Duvivier makes unusual use of shadow and of silence.