MAIGRET’S DEAD MAN
UK, 2016, 88 minutes, Colour.
Rowan Atkinson, Ian Puleston- Davies, Mark Hadfield, Sean Dingwall, Leo Starr, Lucy Cohu.
Directed by Jon East.
Dead Man is the second television movie in a series featuring Rowan Atkinson as George Simenon’s Inspector Maigret. Rowan Atkinson might not have been the first or even the 10th choice to portray this character given his reputation in Blackadder as well as his comedies of Mr Bean.. However, he creates a character and maintains it.
While the original stories are very French, and the setting for these films is France, the cast is very British and much of the tone is very British.
The treatment of the case is almost the exact opposite of what is to be seen in the many British police thrillers and detective episodes in contemporary series. Everything is very measured. There is a police squad but they are very calm about their work, taking everything step-by-step, interrogations, analyses, drawing conclusions and setting up confessions.
The atmosphere is very much that of the 1950s.
This case has quite some complexity, massacres in farm homesteads in the south of France with robberies, and a desperate man ringing Maigret and wanting protection, and the linking of these two strands through a killer who works on a factory, employing Eastern European migrants to give him information on wealthy farms, employing them to do the robberies and killings, using some of them as henchmen while he then tries to live the high life.
Ultimately, Maigret brings the two cases together, arrests the main killer and, with a touch of compassion, is able to offer the widow of the man who had been seeking his help the opportunity to adopt the new born child, son of one of the most vicious of the killers.
1. The popularity of George Simenon’s novels? The personality of Inspector Maigret?
2. The range of versions, especially from France? This British interpretation? A very British France…?
3. The period, costumes and decor, vehicles, weapons? France, towns, the countryside, the racetrack, homes, inns? The musical score?
4. The opening crime, the massacre, the police arrival, the young girl as witness? Her later giving testimony?
5. The man in a panic, moving around the city, making the phone calls to Maigret? His fears? His death?
6. Maigret, as a police chief, the man calling him – and the later revelation that his wife had met Maigret and admired him and his wife? The man wanting help? Maigret in himself, age, experience, quiet manner, the range of staff and the style of collaboration? The officer commanding, the robberies in Picardy, forbidding Maigret to pursue his own investigations? Maigret and his processes, staying at home, discussions with his wife, interrogations, deductions, analyses, gaining information, building progress?
7. The dead man, identification, Nina and her disappearance? The advertisement in the paper, the dead man’s friend turning up, the explanations are finding the body and disposing of it, his prison record? Nina and Albert, Albert and his gambling, their wanting a family?
8. Maigret and his wife working the diner?
9. The criminal boss, his henchmen, using the people from the factory, from Eastern Europe? Information about and the wealthy farms, the robberies, the brutality and murders? Fencing the jewellery? His girl from the club, the dancer? His promises? His use of violence, Maria and her participation? His shooting – his being arrested, put in the
cell? The interrogation of his girlfriend, not realising the truth, her disgust at the fur and jewellery and taking them off?
10. Maria, pregnant, and the hospital, the birth? Her being identified, her brutality, not caring? The baby taken from her? Her imminent execution?
11. Maigret and his wife visiting Nina, the offer of the child, his arranging the adoption?
12. How well did this British telemovie capture the essence of Simenon, the crime stories, Maigret and his personality, investigations?
