Sixteen years after Julien Duvivier's film, Burgess Meredith directed the second adaptation of Simenon's La tête d'un homme. “The City of Paris” is credited as one of the stars of this bizarrely menacing little film. Its bustling streets are the locus for a Cheshire-cat-and-mouse game between Simenon's Inspector Maigret (Charles Laughton); his prey, a pathetic street vendor (Burgess Meredith); and his prey, Franchot Tone as a Nietzschean manipulator with a penchant for hanging his grand philosophies off the Eiffel Tower. Director Meredith recreates a Paris straight out of Les misérables for actor Meredith, then updates it with neorealist street scenes, a Wellesian tracking camera, and a trio of amoral American expatriates (a man, his wife, and his mistress, arm in arm); in this universe everyone has something to gain by murder, and a nearsighted little man is lost indeed. Enter Maigret-sly, a bit shy, always courteous, and bitterly moral as portrayed by Laughton-to torment his victim as he saves him from larger predators.