Color, 1981, 128 mins.

Directed by Bertrand Tavernier

Starring Philippe Noiret, Isabelle Huppert, Stephane Audran, Jean-Pierre Marielle, Eddy Mitchell / Music by Philippe Sarde / Cinematography by Pierre-William Glenn

Format: DVD - Criterion (MSRP $29.95)

Letterboxed (1.78:1) (16x9 enhanced) / Dolby Digital Mono


The tradition of film noir has long been a favorite subject of French directors like Francois Truffaut and Jean-Pierre Melville, and while he's best known in the U.S. for benign dramas like A Sunday in the Country, Bertrand Tavernier has occasionally gone to that well, too. His most successful crime drama remains Coup de Torchon (Clean Slate), a scathing, black comedy adaptation of Jim Thompson's hard-boiled novel, Pop. 1280 (published in France as Pop. 1275, much to Tavernier's amusement on this disc).

Transposing the Thompson narrative from the Depression-era rural South to 1930s French Africa, the film begins with dejected and widely ridiculed police chief Lucien Cordier (Philippe Noiret) resting under a tree as he watches a group of African boys suffering underneath the merciless sunlight. An eclipse begins, frightening away the lurking vultures overhead, and Cordier builds them a fire. He then returns home to his openly contemptuous wife, Huguette (a frumped up Stephane Audran), and goes about his daily routine which finds law abiding townspeople and the shady underworld alike mocking his lack of power. Spurred on by the erotically charged presence of a new arrival named Rose (Isabelle Huppert), Lucien realizes his position allows him a dangerous amount of immunity to the law... which comes in handy when he turns to murder. And then he does it again...

While Jim Thompson adaptations briefly became a hot property in the '90s thanks to The Grifters, After Dark My Sweet, and a remake of The Getaway, Tavernier's film makes a deliberate effort to capture the sardonic, multi-layered nature of the late novelist's difficult prose. Each character seems to have ten different thoughts running through their minds in each scene, and Noiret does a magnificent job of gradually transforming from a bumbling schmuck into an all too human monster. Huppert has less to do but looks terrific all the same, while Audran (best known for her films with husband Claude Chabrol) is pitch perfect as usual. Composer Philippe Sarde provides one of his best scores, a poignant mixture of jazz and orchestra with some odd atonal flourishes, and the parched cinematography manages to be elegant and sweaty at the same time.

Criterion's anamorphically enhanced DVD is a tremendous improvement over their gritty looking laserdisc; colors are more robust and detail levels are quite impressive. Some dark scenes are still grainy due to the original source material, but apart from a mint quality opening night screening, this film couldn't look much better. The optional English subtitles have also been tweaked to improve both clarity and grammar over prior editions. The disc also includes the U.S. theatrical trailer (which passes this off as a crime story, a comedy, and a romance -- pretty accurately), a 20 minute video interview with Tavernier (who offers some nice insights into the adaptation process and the bizarre location shooting), and an alternate ending (narrated by Tavernier) which finds the memorable public dance finale culminating in the arrival of men in gorilla suits! Hmm, wonder why they cut that one?


Mondo Digital ReviewsMondo Digital LinksFrequently Asked Questions