La loi des hommes (1962) User Reviews

I confess..

[dbdumonteil · 1 August 2005]

This is a strange film noir .After the attack of the armored van,nothing is really what a fan of the genre expects.It's a cat and mouse play between a cop (Philippe Leroy) and a bourgeoise (Micheline Presle) who may (or may not) be involved in the robbery .We will never know whether he harasses her because it's his duty or because he's deeply in love with her.Then begins a curious chase,where the woman always escapes with the help of weirdoes: a princess (played by a cast against type Arletty:one of her last parts,her last year in the movies ;Arletty's inimitable accent is almost absent here),a German blacksmith who was a hero (or maybe was not at all)during WW2,then a priest whom the heroine confesses to.That may be the meaning of the title (the law of man ) cause God,the priest says,has got nothing to do with man's law.

Polar Negri

[writers_reign · 7/10 · 9 January 2009]

Still acting at the age of 83 Charles Gerard has had a fairly undistinguished career embracing three disciplines, writer - 6 screenplays, director, 10 movies and actor, 63 roles and judging by his list of titles as director I'd have to guess that La loi des hommes is fairly typical. Any film that features both Micheline Presle and Arletty has to have something going for it and it was purely on the basis of these two iconic names that I shelled out for the DVD. As it turned out I was far from disappointed as what begins as a fairly straightforward polar with an armoured car heist segues into something more interesting if a tad opaque. By 1962 top-billed Presle was on the cusp of her 'mother' phase and Arletty, in her fourth decade as an A-list vedette was in the closing stages of one of the most distinguished careers in French cinema. Both deliver as one would expect and the momentum of their craftsmanship elevates the entire largely pedestrian cast resulting in a more or less satisfying whole.

Lousy

[searchanddestroy-1 · 1 October 2023]

This French crime film is only worth for the sixties, early sixties, atmosphere. That's all. The plot is complicated, flat, uninteresting, boring.... The opening scene robbery is laughable - the heist of the century, as the news say.... Rubbish. The plot is an outrage for the audiences, one of the worst French crime films of this period. The only interest for me is to see Philippe Leroy Beaulieu as the lead and Michel Constantin in a small role. They both were together in LE TROU, three years earlier. Forget it. Poor Micheline Presle, so far here from BOULE DE SUIF. She deserved better than this crap.