In the Marais quarter of Paris, single women are being murdered at dusk. Divining that the murderer is playing games with him, Inspector Maigret sets a trap, but the bloodthirsty assassin gives him a run for his money.
Jean Gabin was the seventh actor to be cast as Inspector Maigret, after Abel Tarride in Le Chien jaune (The Yellow Dog), directed by his son Jean Tarride; Pierre Renoir in Night at the Crossroads directed by his younger brother, Jean Renoir; Harry Baur in Julien Duvivier’s La Tête d’un homme (A Man’s Neck); and Albert Préjean in three films produced under German Occupation: Picpus and Les Caves du Majestic (Majestic Hotel Cellars) directed by Richard Pottier and Cécile est morte (Cecile Is Dead), directed by Maurice Tourneur. Afterwards came Charles Laughton in The Man on the Eiffel Tower, directed by Burgess Meredith and finally Michel Simon in Les Témoignages d’un enfant de coeur, an episode in Henri Verneuil’s Brelan d’as.
Of all these, Gabin’s proved the most popular on the big screen. His manner was more familiar than that of Baur or Renoir. He was more streetwise than Simon and more authoritative than Préjean. Indeed, he went to perform the part on two further occasions, in 1959, again with Delannoy directing (Maigret et l’affaire Saint-Fiacre, which is almost as good as Maigret tend un piège); and finally in 1963, in Maigret Sees Red, directed by Gilles Grangier).
The screenplay is co-written by Jean Delannoy, Michel Audiard – a popular dialogue writer whom Gabin used to admire – and the Geneva-born film critic Rodolphe-Maurice Arlaud, who had already collaborated with Delannoy and Granier-Deferre. Annie Girardot gives a remarkable performance in what is one of her first major roles, two years before Visconti’s Rocco and his Brothers. And of course she would go to make The Organizer with Mario Monicelli and The Ape Woman with Marco Ferreri. The cast also includes Lino Ventura as an inspector. The two men had become friends since shooting Touchez pas au Grisbi together.

Edouard Waintrop