“Every detail of every moment of every shot makes La Nuit du Carrefour the only great French detective film, and, indeed, the greatest French film adventure.” Jean-Luc Godard
A “mystery film” in every sense of the word, Renoir's La Nuit du Carrefour is very rarely seen, but has a reputation that precedes it for both obscurity of plot and brilliance of style. On the first score, Renoir himself is said to have commented, “I don't think anyone understood it, especially me,” and Jean Mitry, myth has it, “mislaid three reels after the shooting was over.” On the second, critic Pierre Leprohon, in his book “Jean Renoir,” calls the film “one of Renoir's most misunderstood movies,” and places it with La Chienne and Boudu Saved from Drowning in a “satiric trilogy of the French petty bourgeoisie” through which Renoir exerted his strongest influence on the French New Wave of the Sixties.
Based on a mystery by Georges Simenon and made with the collaboration of the author, La Nuit du Carrefour features Renoir's brother, Pierre Renoir, in the role of Detective Maigret. The action all takes place in the dead of night at a lonely crossroads not far from Paris. Atmosphere reigns supreme here; Renoir followed not the letter of the mystery genre, but the spirit. Leprohon writes of the film's “atmosphere of anguish, mystery and a strange nostalgia...”
La Nuit du Carrefour is presented without subtitles but with an English synopsis.