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Peur Sur La Ville (1975)
a.k.a. Fear Over the City (UK)
a.k.a The Night Caller (US)
Directed by Henri Verneuil
Skip through the special features on Warner Home Video’s D.V.D. of Peter Yates Bullitt (1968) and you’ll find an interesting feaurette entitled Steve McQueen’s Commitment to Reality; a promo made at the time of the film’s production. As this quaint little doco unspools, we’re told that McQueen had driven the iconic Ford Mustang for real during the (then) seminal car chases and the viewer is given the impression that the film’s star is really something special for doing so. FACT: next to the stunt work that French superstar Jean-Paul Belmondo did for Peur Sur La Ville, McQueen was merely dipping his little toe into a very deep pool! Reality schmality.
The action sequences in Peur Sur La Ville are nothing short of jaw dropping; even by the standards of movies today. One chase sequence in particular has Belmondo pursuing a suspect up an interior stairwell, out through a window, across a series of rooftops, whilst hanging onto various fascias and bits of guttering before smashing through a skylight into a department store. Once on street level again, a car-chase ensues, climaxing with Belmondo running atop a moving train! Verneuil lets his audience know that it’s his leading man putting his neck on the line as Belmondo can be clearly seen, every step of the way.
Peur SurLa Ville would probably never have been conceived if it hadn’t been for the aforementioned Bullitt or for that matter, William Friedkin’s The French Connection (1971). For years, European critics sneered at American remakes/reworking of classic foreign language films and held theirs heads high with the view that continental cinema was not only innovative, but actually set the trends for the Yanks to replicate. However, Bullitt, French Connection and Don Siegel’s Dirty Harry (1971) set the record straight once and for all; the anti-hero cop was as American as the hamburger. These groundbreaking films introduced audiences to unorthodox cops that had a case to break, by any means necessary; sometimes acting as ruthless as the criminals they were fighting to keep off the streets. All three films upped the ante in terms of action and break-neck editing.
By the mid seventies, Italian directors such as Enzo G. Castellari with High Crime (1973), Franco Martinelli with Violent Rome/Roma Violenta (1975) Fernando De Leo with Calibre 9/Milano Calibre 9 (1974) and Umberto Lenzi with The Tough Ones/Italia a Mano Armata (1976) had all begun to dabble within this new found genre with the likes of Franco Nero, Tomas Milian, Maurizio Merli and Fabio Testi as the names on the marquees. Although immensely enjoyable almost all of these Italian poliziers never rose above formulaic. However, Verneuil, a Turkish film-maker working in France, pulls off a real coup in Peur Sur La Ville by making his film a hybrid of both polizia flick and giallo and it works on every level.
A diabolical killer calling himself Minos, is on the loose in Paris. Having lived through the “free love “ of the sixties, and not getting any, he decides that he will “act as an arm of justice that will condemn without pity, and execute all those who wallow in the sexual mud that is drowning us” and sets about murdering promiscuous females. Hot on his heels is police Inspector Latelier (Belmondo), to whom Minos has been sending a piece of his picture after each murder in the view that the photograph will be complete when his work is done. As Paris’ most unconventional and unruly detective, Latelier gets sadistic pleasure from seeing his suspects squirming. During one of the Sub-plots, Latelier refuses to call a critically wounded drug dealer an ambulance until he gets the information he is after, which echoes Dirty Harry.
As much as Verneuil was influenced by the like of Siegel and Freidkin Peur sur La Ville owes a huge debt to the films of Mario Bava. The opening scene when Minos taunts a victim on the phone, is reminiscent of The Telephone episode of Bava’s anthology Black Sabbath (1963) and later during the aforementioned chase sequence, after crashing through the skylight, Latelier and Minos face off amongst the mannequins of a poorly lit store room; a nod to the Italian maestro’s Hatchet for the Honeymoon.
Peur Sur La Ville features a wonderful music score by Ennio Morricone. The score is integral to some of the set pieces as one would expect but during the tension-filled opening, Morricone orchestrates only a single drumbeat that is extremely unnerving as it precedes the killer’s knock at the door, prolonging the suspense.
Canal + Video’s DVD is presented in anamorphic 1:66:1 and is as good a transfer as one could expect from a film of this age. Print damage is minimal and the colours seem a little washed-out. The sound is presented in two-channel mono, but is well balanced and serves Morricone’s score well. The viewer has the choice of watching the film either in the original French language or in a dubbed English version. There are no subtitles available. Extra features are limited to the original theatrical trailer (in French), an interview with Verneuil (again in French) and a poster gallery.
Peur Sur La Ville is one of the lost landmarks of action cinema but is so much more. If you have a thing for polizia flicks or gialli, this ones for you.
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