Maigret Sees Red

Jean Gabin (Port of Shadows) returns for his final outing in the role he was born to play—Georges Simenon’s punctilious, pipe-smoking sleuth—in Maigret Sees Red (Maigret voit rouge). Three men, cruising Paris’s Pigalle district in a Chevrolet, shoot a bystander. When the police arrive, the body is gone. The good Inspector Maigret suspects a ring of U.S. mobsters when the trail leads him to a bowling alley where Americans gather and a mysterious femme fatale called Lily (Françoise Fabian, My Night at Maud’s) works. Maigret’s old FBI buddy advises him not to cross swords with these underworld cutthroats. But the dogged detective resolves to carry out his investigation to the bitter end in this Simenon page-turner turned neo-noir cinema by Gilles Grangier, director of Gabin-fronted gems like Rhine Virgin, Hi-Jack Highway, Speaking of Murder and The Night Affair. Co-starring Marcel Bozzuffi (The French Connection) and Michel Constantin (Le Trou); music by Michel Legrand (The Thomas Crown Affair) and Francis Lemarque (Playtime).