Requiem pour un caïd (1964) French Polar Noir

Directed by Maurice Cloche. 

Written by Maurice Cloche and Jean Kerchner with additional dialog by  Jean Bernard-Luc.  Cinematography by Marc Fossard (Pépé le Moko, Django Reinhardt, Sweet Violence), Music by Louiguy. 

The film stars Pierre Mondy (Lost Souvenirs, Boulevard) as Antoine Delille, Jean-Pierre Bernard (The Eiger Sanction) as Joseph Pinelli dit "Jo", Janine Vila as Corinne Bellac, Claire Maurier as Jeannette Sorel. Magali Noël (Rififi, Amacord, La Dolce Vita, Des femmes disparaissent) as Eva Chiquois, Michel Barbey :as Ange Tavalesco dit "Vasco", Paul Pavel as Roger Dubois, le frère de Jeannette, Jacques Duby as  Dominique, l'adjoint de Delille, Patricia Viterbo as Éliane, la fiancée de Dominique, Daniel Ceccaldi as  l'inspecteur Belin, Étienne Bierry as l'inspecteur Le Gall, Albert Medina as le commissaire de la P.J., Jacques Monod as le divisionnaire de la P.J., Michel Bardinet as l'adjoint du divisionnaire, Charles Bouillaud as le greffier de la P.J., Hella Petri as Mado, la "psycho-esthéticienne," Jean Tissier as le père "La Coquille," Francis Blanche as Émile, Roger Dutoit as Grégorio, Pierre Doris as le patron de l'hôtel Monaco, Robert Berri as le patron du Picadilly Hôtel, Charles Millot as Mick, le fourreur, Dominique Zardi as un truand ami de Vasco.  

Pierre Mondy as Antoine Delille

Magali Noël as Eva Chiquois

Jean-Pierre Bernard as Joseph Pinelli

Story

A man climbs a stairway out of a Metro Station. We follow him as he walks to work. He crosses the Seine to the Île de la Cité to Police HQ Quai des Orfèvres. 

A V.O. tells us that This man is a senior police officer Antione de Lilli part of the social Brigade of the Justice Police, aka The Vice Squad. 

Antione de Lilli

He's currently leading a Vice Squad investigation of a Paris pimp.

The pimp is Joseph "Jo" Pinelli, he's 32 years old, besides pimping he's a major suspect in the machine gun killing of a gendarme, wanted for assault, drugs, and other gang related activities. We see a police official pull Jo's file

The Joseph Pinelli file

Cut to Pinelli with a machine gun cutting down a gendarme.

Cut back to HQ the conversation over the files tells us that Pinelli had alibis. Five of them and three are dead two of those women. But the other two women are alive. A prostitute Eva Chiquois, and Mado Roller. Antoine is informed that Pinelli is currently romancing / recruiting / grooming, a candy counter/ newsstand clerk at Orly. 

Eva Chiquois and Mado Roller

Antione pays a visit to the Orly airport candy counter where the woman, Corinne Bellac works, so that a colleague can point her out to him. 

Janine Vila as Corinne Bellac

When Antoine walks over to the counter to get a closer look, he has an unexpected chance encounter with Pinelli who just got off a flight, they exchange words. 

Pinelli heads to a phone booth and calls Corinne at the counter. Suspicious that he may be being tailed, he must have called her to tell her that something came up and he can't pick her up as planned, and to take a bus to the Institute. 

Pinelli splits hops into his Jaguar and then we watch as Corinne hops a bus. Pinelli has plans to eventually send Corinne to Abidjan in the Ivory Coast to prostitute her.

We cut to Pinelli and Mado his "nurse," in bed at his Institute of Psycho-esthetic. Pinelli had time for a quickie while waiting on Corrine to arrive by bus.

The Institute is just another con that he runs for purposes of prostitution. When the bell rings Pinelli tells Mado that it is Corrine and he sends Mado out to get rid of her last customer "reviving" in the treatment room, and answer the door. Mado gives him a kiss and takes off.

Introductions

Pinelli as is his M.O. takes Corrine on an impressive date and they have a romantic dinner on a boat cruising along the Seine. 

We cut to a sequence at the Hotel Stella. Eva Chiquois, Pinelli's top prostitute is coming down the stair with Ange "Vasco" Tavalesco, Pinelli's right hand man. 

Eva with Michel Barbey as Ange "Vasco" Tavalesco 

Pinelli zeros in on Eva. Vasco heads over to the bar in the lobby and has a drink.

Pinelli accuses Eve of hold back some money from her tricks. She protests. Pinelli shoves her into a side room off the lobby and starts beating on her. As her cries get louder, the bartender turns up the volume to drown her out. 

A big break comes when Eva Chiquois gets herself together, leaves to hotel crosses the street and goes into a phone booth to "drop a dime" on Pinelli's operations.

Eva speaks with Antoine an she tells him to raid the Hotel Stella.

Antoine gets his squad together and they raid the Stella Hotel. They bag enough prostitutes to need a police van to haul them all.

The result of the raid is that Antoine and his squad now have a line on the identities of a lot of the prostitutes working for Pinelli. 

Now Antoine and his squad concentrates on staking out all of Pinelli's streetwalkers, the surveillance of all his known associates and the hot sheet hotels that are part of his opperations.  

As the police start to put pressure on Pinelli, his prostitutes, madams, and other associates. One of Pinelli's rivals smelling blood makes their move. It goes Noirsville for Pinelli when Vasco gets machine gunned in his Jag. 

Noirsville

Maurice Cloche gives us the ins and outs of a Vice Squad investigation. We get real Paris settings, 36 Quai des Orfèvres, Boulevard Saint-Michel, Boulevard Marceau, Place Pigall, etc., etc.  We get nighttime stake outs, and the tailing prostitutes as they come and go along with various interrogations. The police use every ruse that they can think of to get their suspects to talk. They weave a web that Pinelli will eventually get caught in.

Maurice Cloche and Marc Fossard fashion a serious police procedural. The only actors I recognized was Pierre Mondy and Magali Noël. 7/10

Summary: Paris. Inspector Antoine Delille (Pierre Mondy) of the high society police is following the trail of a pimp, a certain Jo Pinelli (Jean-Pierre Bernard). He's about to pull off a big hit with a certain Vasco (Michel Barbey).

Review: Delille, supported by his colleague Dominique (Jacques Duby), will put pressure on the women who work in Pinelli's entourage. Their goal is to force the criminal to make a mistake. Otherwise, he'll remain caught red-handed.

This unpretentious thriller, directed by Maurice Cloche, who doesn't have a great reputation, is a pleasant surprise.

While the story isn't particularly original, it allows us to rediscover 1960s Paris: the action, which begins in the offices at 36 Quai des Orfèvres, moves to numerous locations in the capital, giving the whole thing a documentary feel.

The film's other strength lies in its cast, which, while not featuring any leading figures from the era, offers a fine array of supporting roles, often colorful. In addition to those already mentioned, we find Daniel Ceccaldi as a typewriter-loving inspector, Jacques Monod as a police commissioner, Francis Blanche as a talkative and menacing accomplice, and Magali Noël, a humiliated and vengeful prostitute...

Without spectacular effects or heroes, featuring criminals who are ordinary people who have simply gone wrong, police officers, civil servants doing their best to do their job, this film turns out to be a likeable thriller that has acquired a nice patina over time.

Fabrice Prieur