MONSIEUR HIRE
Friday, October 14 – Renoir Theatre – 1:25 pm
(Screening ends at 2:45 pm)
FICTION / DRAMA, THRILLER
CLASSIC SERIES
Presented in Association with:
Cohen Media Group
France Televisions
StudioCanal
International Premiere Digitally Restored Version | France | 1989 | Drama, Thriller | 80 min | In French with English subtitles
Directed by: Patrice Leconte
Written by: Patrice Leconte, Patrick Dewolf
Based on a novel by: George Simenon
Produced by: René Cleitman (Hachette Premiere), Philippe Carcassonne (Cine-@)
Cinematography: Denis Lenoir
Film Editing: Joëlle Hache
Original Score: Michael Nyman
Cast: Michel Blanc (Monsieur Hire), Sandrine Bonnaire (Alice), Luc Thuillier (Emile), Andre Wilms (Police Inspector)
International Sales: StudioCanal
U.S. Distributor: Cohen Media Group
Michel Blanc’s nuanced performance, Patrice Leconte‘s refined visual style, and Denis Lenoir’s moody cinematography are perfectly in sync with George Simenon’s elegant prose in this beautiful adaptation of the author’s 1933 detective novel, Les Fiançailles de Monsieur Hire. More an in-depth study of loneliness, longing and betrayal than a murder mystery, the film is made up of minute, carefully-observed details, placing its central character — a fastidious, reclusive tailor with an inclination toward voyeurism — under a veritable microscope. Its telling manages to be simultaneously sensual and austere… and finally, heartbreaking. Unapologetically romantic, Monsieur Hire is very different from the searing social indictment of Julien Duvivier’s 1946 adaptation of the same story, Panic, or of the original novel itself. Leconte has chosen, instead, to paint a restrained portrait of vulnerability and unrequited love, set to the lush, rhapsodic phrases of Brahms Piano Quartet in G Minor.
Patrice Leconte made amateur films as a teenager and worked as a cartoonist for the Belgian comics magazine Pilote while attending film school. He began making shorts in 1969, and his body of work has been extremely versatile. However, Leconte didn’t come to international attention until his ninth feature film, Monsieur Hire (1989), which opened in Cannes and was named Best Film of the year by the French Syndicate of Cinema Critics and the National Board of Review in the U.S. He has directed 43 films to date, many of them honored at festivals worldwide. Ridicule (1996) nabbed the Lumière Award for Best Film, a Donatello Award for Best Foreign Film, a Golden Hugo at the Chicago Film Festival, a BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Film, César Awards for Best Director and Best Film, and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Girl on the Bridge (1999) won the Don Quijote Award at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival. Widow of St. Pierre (2000) garnered the Russian Film Critics’ Award at the Moscow Film Festival. Man on the Train (2002) took the Audience Award at the Venice Film Festival and was named Best Foreign Film by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association. His most recent film, Maigret (2022), starred Gérard Depardieu as novelist Georges Simenon’s iconic police detective.
