Recent discovery: Le concerto de la peur

Absent Chet Baker’s aggressively dissonant free jazz score, there’d be little to recommend 1963’s Le concerto de la peur. Director José Bénazéraf’s micro-budget crime drama drags along at a snail’s pace, as rival gangsters solemnly discuss, debate and deliberate how to dispose of each other. Guy Fanelli’s script is drawn from Anne-Marie Devillers’ 1959 novel, The Scent of Fear; in his on-screen foreword, Bénazéraf claims to be intrigued by how “this so-called universe of mobsters … is dominated by a very great puerility [wherein] the brutal games of these ‘heroes’ are games of childhood, and the absurdity of these games, pushed to their extreme, inevitably lead them to death.” 

Very philosophical. Alas, Bénazéraf utterly fails to deliver dramatic irony, settling instead for exploitatively bared flesh: quite a lot of it for the early 1960s, even by French standards. (No surprise: He soon abandoned mainstream filmmaking for porn.)

 

The story unfolds during a single day. Lab tech Nora (Yvonne Monlaur) accepts a date with co-worker Chevrel (Robert Darame), not realizing that he also belongs to a narcotics syndicate run by Eric (Hans Verner). Chevrel doesn’t survive long, executed by a thug belonging to Eric’s rival, Sacha (Jean-Pierre Kalfon). The latter then ups the ante by kidnapping Eric’s brother, Fred (Marcel Champel); the following morning, Eric orders his men to kidnap Nora. (The reason for that remains fuzzy.) Although she initially displays considerable spunk, and even kills her scantily dressed “handler” (Regine Rumen, as Vanda) during an escape attempt, Nora then succumbs to the world’s fastest — and most extreme — case of Stockholm syndrome, falling in love with both Eric and his lieutenant, Valdo (Michel Lemoine). 

The gun-blazing climax piles up bodies with Shakespearean élan; Nora ultimately is abandoned when Valdo, the lone surviving gang member, drives off without her.

Bénazéraf’s pacing is plodding at best; tension and occasional flashes of urgency result solely from Baker’s forcefully harsh jazz riffs. (You’ll find nothing resembling a melody here.) He’s supported by sax, bass and drums; alas, the players’ identities have been lost to the mists of time.