Portrait Of An Assassin (1949)

Carnival daredevil Fabius (Pierre Brasseur) is tired of his dangerous job and his nagging wife (Arletty), whom he jealously suspects of having an affair. A botched attempt to kill her accidentally wounds the seductive carnival owner, Catherine (Maria Montez), a woman turned on by reckless men. When he falls for Catherine, Fabius decides to stay with the carnival. But he still must deal with his troublesome wife, as well as Eric (the incomparable Erich von Stroheim), one of Catherine's former lovers, now hopelessly paralyzed. This international cast of film greats will keep you riveted to the last suspenseful scene of this murderous melodrama.

French melodrama, and don't offer Maria Montez a ride on your motorcycle

Maria Montez, a sultry temptress who achieved fame in the Forties, was no better an actress in French than she was in English. During WWII, garbed in wisps of gauze and wearing tons of flashy jewels, she undulated her way through a series of highly popular flying-carpet adventures filmed in Technicolor and co-starring the likes of Jon Hall and Turhan Bey. When WWII ended her Hollywood days gradually came to a close. By 1949 she and her French husband, Jean-Pierre Aumont, had settled in France. Montez made six films in France and Italy before dying in 1951 at age 39. She had a heart attack while bathing and drowned in her bathtub. Nowadays, I suppose, she is mainly remembered because of her popularity among men who like to dress up and pretend they're Judy Garland, Carol Channing and...Maria Montez.

This French drama is ripe to the bone. The storyline -- a man lured to his doom by a heartless woman -- is older than a bag of moldy croissants. In an odd way, it's sort of fascinating to watch because of the overwrought melodrama the director, a fellow with two names who liked to be billed as one name, Bernard-Roland, pours over the proceedings. The result is 86 minutes of what we presume Bernard-Roland thought was French existential angst. There's the same inevitability we see with an over-confident carpenter who hits his finger several times with a hammer. The movie isn't much good, but it's oddly watchable.

Montez plays Christina de Rinck, the beautiful, cool owner/manager of circus acts. She specializes in the dangerous ones that feature handsome men. Pierre Brasseur plays Fabius, billed as Fabius the Great, who runs his motorcycle around the walls in a wooden circle, faster and faster, with paying circus rubes watching over the top to see if he makes it. One night, hating and fearing his job, he shoots a woman he thinks is his wife, Martha (played by Arletty). Why his wife? Because it enables the plot to bring him into contact with Christina, the woman he wings by mistake. It turns out Christina is the queen black widow of that peculiar type of circus manager who loves her men to do increasingly dangerous things, especially when they die doing them. It's not long before Martha is really worried, before Christina has shamed Fabius into trying a new act, and before the infamous, gravity-defying Double Loop is ready for a high society performance debut. Lurking about is Erich von Stroheim as one of Christina's former lovers who barely survived the experience. He lays out prophesies of doom and walks in a disturbing corkscrew manner, encased in a steel vest from throat to navel. Be prepared for what Bernard-Roland considers justice from the Gods of melodrama.

Portrait of an Assassin has a few good things. Pierre Brasseur, who ten years later would play Doctor Génessier in Eyes Without a Face - Criterion Collection, gradually overcomes the conventionalities of the script and does a nice job as the doomed Pierre. Maria Montez, still looking great if a little matronly, does no harm as the doomed Christina. Most of all there's Arletty as the doomed Martha. It's a thankless role, yet we watch her every time she's in a scene. With her pale, smooth face, her high hairline and her dense, black, short hairdo, she looks like something out of Kabuki by way of Willie Wonka. Arletty was a great French actress who was accused of horizontal collaboration in occupied France. She took a German officer as a lover. After the Germans left Paris, she was sentenced to 120 days in jail and forbidden to act for nearly three years.

The DVD is not in good shape. Yellow subtitles are easy to read but garish. There are no extras. June 12, 2008

Worth seeing for any Stroheim fan.

If, like me, you spend your lazy hours watching Erich's performances in obscure B movies hoping every so often to find the gold, this movie pays off pretty well. Erich's performance in this film is small, but extremely moving, and deserves to be extracted from the rest of this silly movie and placed in that great Erich von Stroheim highlight video that every EvS fan would love to see someday.

The cult of Stroheim is a difficult one to follow. Its practitioners must sift through countless hours of old film in the hope of catching a glimpse of the real Stroheim, somewhere amid all the mutilation and the mediocrity: a woman making love to a bed of gold coins, a simpleton left to his fate in the middle of Death Valley, a convent girl presiding over an orgy in an African brothel, a brutal bully just as brutally murdered by an orangutan. If social taboos had not stopped him, he would have been the Moliere of the 20th Century. In this film, near the end of his career, we see this intensely proud artist, now old, actually caring enough about some crummy role to actually cry real tears for it. Worth seeing for any Stroheim fan.
March 13, 2005

PORTRAIT D'UN ASSASSIN (1949)

aka Portrait of an Assassin (1949) aka Pasión Prohibida

(Drama, 1 hr 30 min, Black & White) S.E.L.F. - FRANCE

DIRECTOR: Bernard Roland

CAST: Maria Montez (As: Christina), Erich Von Stroheim (As: Eric), Arletty (As: Martha), Pierre Brasseur (Fabius), Jules Berry (Pfeiffer), Marcel Dalio (Fred)

COMMENTS: Christina (Montez) is the sadistic manager of a circus show, who uses her attractiveness to seduce men. But she only gives-up to them in exchange of promises of performing a dangerous acrobatic act in motorcycle which it could cause them the death or make them handicaps for ever, as it happened to several of her lovers. One of them, the unfortunate Eric (Von Streheim), who became handicap.

An evening, Fabius (Brasseur) met this diabolic woman and soon he abandons his wife because of Lucienne.

Then Martha (Arletty), Fabius' wife, with the intention of saving him, she shows up to the circus and performs the lethal acrobatic act, which it causes her death.

Due to the sacrifice of his beloved wife, Fabius understands at last that he has been manipulated by the evil Lucienne and he takes the decision of killing her.

After committing the murder and completely convinced that he is going to die, he rides the motorcycle for performing the dangerous acrobatic act, but miraculously, he survives and goes to the police to confess his crime.

This one was the second and last French movie of Maria and she was more successful and seductive than ever before.

In this occasion, and by the first time, the critics said her performance was adequate and she demonstrates she has some worthy elements.

Even the French critic, André Bazin, famous by his merciless comments, he admitted that Montez was not so bad in this movie. Other critics were more specific by saying she was the appropriate actress for this role.

This movie was projected in the U.S. only in the art theathers. March 11, 2001

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