When asked to review a film called The Murderer Lives at Number 21 I rather expected something else. Maybe a grey-pallated pg-13 psychological snooze-horror starring Jeffrey Dean Morgan as either a writer or some sort of dad, moving into a new house without knowing he’s accidentally boarded the murder-go-round. Maybe a chicken-fat-smeared British thug drama about coppers n’ killers that’s 2 parts shotguns to 3 parts tits. Maybe a film about a silly bastard who keeps telling people where he lives. So I was shocked to find that 21 is in fact a charming 1942 french comedy whodunnit. Well played, BattleRoyaleWithCheese. Well played.
The Murderer Lives at Number 21, or L’Assassin Habite… Au 21 for those wish to appear intelligent when recommending it, is the debut film of acclaimed french director Henri-Georges Clouzot, who’d later find prominence as a master of suspense with thrillers like The Wages of Fear and Les Diaboliques, often finding himself compared to Alfred Hitchcock. In fact the two were sometimes rivals; Clouzot beat the legendary director to securing the rights to make Les Diaboliques by a matter of hours.
But this is a much lighter affair. There are touches of a macabre flair – a lengthy killer’s POV tracking shot is an effective tension-ratcheter – but 21 places a greater focus on comedic characterisation and witty verbal sparring. The film has a surplus of personality, populated entirely by arch characters played with delicious relish by a wonderful ensemble cast, chewing their way through a sly, and often sexy, script. All of which is fortunate because, as a whodunnit it’s a rather slight affair.
Detective Wens and his batshit-bonnetted girlfriend Mila (returning characters of the director’s, having previously sleuthed their way through Clouzot-penned Le Dernier des Six the year before) are hunting a calling-card carrying serial killer called Mr Durand. When a snitch reveals that Mr Durand is one of the residents at a boarding house, the titular 21, Wens goes undercover as a protestant parson in order to discover which of the 8 residents is the killer… before he/she can kill again.
The single-setting, suspicion ’em up scenario (Ten Little Indians, Murder on the Orient Express, all the rest) is wonderfully rich, and played with an almost parodic joy. One of the characters is even a thriller writer who, naturally, recognises the circumstances as one worthy of the pulps and even makes a grisly prediction of death. Will it come true? You bet your baguette.
There’s so much to love in this setup, so many of the suspects being so obviously slippery that they must almost be ruled out on principle. Wens’ investigations scenes are beautiful little comic vignettes, each laced with a slender vein of threat and punctuated by a cheeky punchline. It’s just a shame that it doesn’t last. The film’s running time is a somewhat enemic 82 minutes, and while there aren’t any cogs missing from its clockwork structure, it could’ve done with taking its time a little more. There was so much charm in its boarding house set-up, that more time with the suspects, a slower build of suspicion and tension and the film would have felt much more substantial. But if it’s froth, 21 is tasty froth, definitely worth sampling.
As so much of the film is understandably plot-driven, there’s not much more I really want to say about it, other than to heartily recommend it. Some of the more thriller-literate in the audience might call the ending before it happens but that won’t make the journey any less pleasurable. There’s even a slight touch of french kinkiness to proceedings that belies the film’s age, and it’s these quirks that place it above the rote and the routine. In subsequent years Clouzot would achieve his greatest successes charting a darker shade of humanity but with The Murderer Lives at Number 21, he gives us Murder Most Vaudeville and it’s more than worth your time. A very pleasant little surprise.
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