The Murderer Lives at Number 21

A crime comedy set in Paris. There is a serial killer in the city. He leaves a card after each murder and the card has a name on it: Monsieur Durand. The police cannot find anyone. A lead comes. The killer may be living in a boarding house; the address is number 21. Inspector Wens goes there. He hides who he is and moves in dressed as a priest. Several people live there. A doctor, a doll maker, a retired man, a nurse, a writer and a blind man. All of them are strange. All of them have a secret. From there the film takes place in one building. The dining table, the corridor, the rooms and the cellar. Wens observes. Everyone suspects somebody else. There is Mila as well. Wens's lover; she wants to be a singer and thinks solving the case will make her famous. She moves into the house without telling him and confuses everything. The murders continue. Inside the house. What the narrative is interested in is not crime but proximity: all its tension comes from the killer eating at the same table every evening. The solution is unusual and the narrative breaks the rule deliberately. The tone is light. The narrative keeps cutting its tension with comedy, and that is unusual for French crime films of the period. This is Henri-Georges Clouzot's first film as a director. It was made in occupied France for a German-financed company; that led to Clouzot being barred from working for a period after the war. Pierre Fresnay, Suzy Delair, Jean Tissier and Noël Roquevert are in the cast. Who it is for: anyone who likes classic French crime films and closed-house puzzles. Who it is not for: anyone looking for realism; the characters are types and the solution rests on the rules of the game rather than on logic.