Quai des Orfèvres

In the first film he made after a four-year blacklist—placed on him after the intense backlash over Le Corbeau—Henri-Georges Clouzot returned to cinemas with this finely crafted crime procedural set in a seedy Parisian underworld where the lives of entertainers and criminals meet—and where some entertainers are the criminals. When a sleazy movie financier who has been pursuing a nightclub performer (Suzy Delair) turns up dead, her jealous husband (Bernard Blier) is the prime suspect in Inspector Antoine’s (Louis Jouvet) investigation for the Quai des Orfèvres, France’s Scotland Yard. A fantastic exercise in twist-and-turn crime storytelling, Quai des Orfèvres marked a triumphant return for Clouzot, who would go on to rival Hitchcock for the title of “Master of Suspense.”