The love of French directors for film noir can be found in any number of key filmmakers ranging from François Truffaut to Bertrand Tavernier to Claude Chabrol, among many others. A disciple of Truffaut, Claude Miller established himself as a major voice in that movement with several films starting with his 1977 adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's This Sweet Sickness (known in France as Dites-lui que je l'aime). Two of his key crime films have undergone recent restorations and make for a compelling intro to his work for the uninitiated, while those who already know will find them as strong as any of their contemporaries. Both have received multiple home video disc releases, but the 2025 U.K. option from Radiance Films which includes 1983's Deadly Circuit (Mortelle Randonnée) on Blu-ray either way and your choice of 1981's The Inquisitor (Garde à Vue, or Police Custody) on either UHD or Blu-ray. The release is also significant as it marks the first English-friendly UHD release of a Miller film; The Inquisitor previously appeared in France without English subtitles, while his excellent An Impudent Girl (L'effrontée) made just after those two films remains only on French unsubtitled UHD as of this writing.

A virtually real-time police interrogation thriller based on an English-language pulp noir novel like many of its peers (in this case, Brainwash by John Wainwright), The Inquisitor takes place on a rainy New Year's Eve as Jérôme Martinaud (Serrault), an affluent small-town attorney, willingly comes in for questioning when evidence points to him after two eight-year-old girls are found sexually assaulted and murdered. The head of the investigation, Antoine Gallien (Ventura), is joined by fellow officer Marcel (Marchand) to dig away at Martinaud's protestations of innocence. Meanwhile the accused is also having marital difficulties with his wife, Chantal (Schneider), and what seems like straightforward questioning gets much murkier, darker, and more disturbing as the nature of truth itself is called into question.

Miller appropriately allows this film to function primarily as an actors' showcase given that he had some of the finest ones around here. The oppressive rainy atmosphere outside (a device used later to equally potent effect in Giuseppe Tornatore's A Pure Formality) accentuates the razor-sharp script by the director, Michel Audiard, and Jean Herman, with very sparing music supplied by the great Georges Delerue. Apart from a marginal art house subtitled theatrical run in 1982, the film has been virtually unseen in the U.S. but has maintained a sterling reputation in France and Germany where it has been on home video very steadily over the years.

The Radiance release comes from the same excellent 4K restoration as the French one and features an excellent encoding with the HDR10-compatible Dolby Vision bringing out the richness in the blacks very nicely along with some piercing blues used as accents in the interior and exterior scenes. Detail is impressive throughout, and the color grading looks accurate (a relative rarity these days for a French-sourced scan of a color film!). The LPCM 1.0 French mono audio sounds excellent, as are the optional English subtitles. Essentially everything is ported over here from the French release but not with English subtitles, starting with the 2016 making-of featurette "Success Story" ("Histoire d'un succès") (34m28s) featuring Miller (plus wife Annie and son Nathan who were on the set), producer Charles Gassot, agent Jean-Louis Livi, collaborator Luc Beraud, art director Lâm Lê, assistant director Jean-Pierre Vergne, and sound editor Nadine Muse talking about the film's genesis (being brought to Miller after other directors like Costa-Gavras), the approach to the chamber drama structure, the scripting and storyboarding, and working with the actors. An archival 1981 interview with Miller and Audiard for Belgian TV (9m51s) charts the adaptation from the book and the unique aspects of doing films made from novels, followed by a 2016 appraisal of the film by Patrice Leconte (5m39s) about the "exemplary lesson in directing" it offers, the trailer, and a 1981 episode of Reverse Shot (Champ contrechamp) (52m1s) devoted to the recent spate of French crime films featuring a roundtable with Miller, Serrault, Audiard, Alain Corneau, and Central Crime Unit head Charles Pellegrini discussing the appeal of homegrown detective stories. The only extra from the French release not included here is an archival 10-minute Serrault TV interview.

Released two years later, Deadly Circuit is an even more slippery crime story with Serrault getting another strong showcase. Based on the novel The Eye of the Beholder by Marc Behm (later adapted disastrously in English under that title in 1999 with Ewan McGregor and Ashley Judd), the unorthodox story follows detective Beauvoir (Serrault), known as "The Eye," who is still recovering from the disappearance of his young daughter. His current job is to dig up info on Paul, the heir of a wealthy local family who believe his current girlfriend could be trouble. His surveillance leads him to the couple in time to see the woman in question (Adjani), who goes by numerous aliases but is really named Catherine, disposing of Paul's body in the water and taking off with his money. Under the guise of reporting that the young man in still alive, The Eye continues to follow Catherine as she commits further homicides and changes identities with The Eye becoming increasingly complicit in her crimes.

Also co-written by Michel Audiard (along with son and now celebrated filmmaker Jacques Audiard), Deadly Circuit superficially feels like an '80s French crime film but its disjointed, obsessive pacing makes it feel wholly unique. Obviously Adjani is ideal casting as an identity-shifting femme fatale (as she already proved with 1983's One Deadly Summer), here getting a great showcase going through a range of wigs, costumes, and accents. Though she and Serrault only interact briefly in the film, it's a treat seeing them dancing around in the same storyline with the climactic meeting between them more than living up to expectations. You also get a feast of character actors here including Macha Méril as Serrault's ex-wife, Sami Frey, Jean-Claude Brialy, and Stéphane Audran in another of her great makeup disguises. Unfortunately the film was trimmed by over 20 minutes shortly after its release and was mostly seen on TV and home video in this compromised form, which deleted a significant amount of surveillance footage and upset both the rhythm of the film and its indulgence in different locations. An uncut 2K restoration was undertaken in France and first released there on Blu-ray and DVD in 2023, followed by its English-subtitled debut on Blu-ray from Kino Lorber in 2024 featuring the trailer and a new audio commentary by filmmaker Daniel Kremer who gets to really dive into the cinematic language of the film, its use of psychological visual cues, the impact of framing and editing choices, and much more.

The Radiance Blu-ray comes from the same impressive uncut restoration, again with the correct color timing and crisp detail throughout. Again the LPCM 1.0 French audio is in great shape and comes with a different, more British translation for the English subtitles. Here Rachael Nisbet handles commentary duties and does a top-notch job examining this film as part of the "polar" style of French crime films, comparing it to the novel, and covering the careers and achievements of the major players. In the 2016 archival featurette "Sacred Circuit" (34m29s), Claude and Annie Miller, director of photography Pierre Lhomme, Gassot, Jacques Audiard, Chabert, and Muse talk about the creation of the script, approaching Serrault despite reservations over him having lost his own daughter, the emotional impact that aspect created within the film, the challenges of getting the film funded, and the logistics of shooting so many locations in twelve weeks. Also included are the trailer and "Hypnotic Fascination" (7m32s) with filmmaker Philippe Le Guay discussing the aesthetic precision of the film despite its challenging production, the reputation of the Behm novel, and his admiration for the screenplay's adaptation choices. The set also comes with an insert booklet featuring an essay by Adam Scovell and an archival interview with Gassot.

Reviewed on September 22, 2025