For those that like French films and Noirs, Kino Lorber has assembled a trio of French Noir films for a Blu-ray release, called the French Noir Collection, which houses Speaking of Murder, Back to the Wall and Witness in the City. This is their first French Noir set offering on Blu-ray from Kino as far as I can recall.

Speaking of Murder (Le rouge est mis) is a 1957 French crime thriller that stars the iconic Jean Gabin (Moontide, The Grand Illusion, The Sicilian Clan) as Louis Bertain, who owns a garage in Paris which also used as a base for his gang of thieves. They only engage in criminal activities on certain nights. The operation is suddenly ruined when one of the members of the gang believes that Louis’ brother is an informer to the police! But is it true or is it part of a conspiracy to bring Louis down?

Back to the Wall (Le dos au mur) is a 1958 noir that stars Jeanne Moreau (Elevator to the Gallows, Seven Days… Seven Nights) as the wife of a wealthy industrialist Jacques Decrey (Gérard Oury, Sea Devils). Jacques, to his chagrin discovers she is having an affair with a young actor. Jacques plans his revenge on his wife by blackmailing her using an alias to make her squirm. This picture has a lot of twists and turns adding a lot of suspense to it.

Witness in the City (Un témoin dans la ville) is another revenge noir tale starring legendary actor Lino Ventura (Razzia Sur La Chnouf, Crime and Punishment, Army of Shadows) as Ancelin. In this movie Industrialist Pierre Verdier (Jacques Berthier, Maria at the End of the World, Rasputin) kills Ancelin’s wife Jeanne (Francoise Brion, To Grab the Ring) by throwing her off a train after an argument. After being dismissed for the crime, Ancelin decides to take revenge on his wife’s killer. But this leads to more problems as Ancelin has been seen by a radio-taxi driver, Lambert (Franco Fabrizi, Love on the Riviera) that has arrived to pick him up. Timing is everything!  

All three films are excellent with Speaking of Murder being the best one, at least to me but each film is well-acted and well-directed and are highly entertaining classic French crime drama with a splash of noir! The cinematography for the films is also superb with great shots of various French locations. Louis page was responsible for Speaking of Murder, Robert Lefebvre for Back to the Wall and Henri Decaë for Witness in the City.

Suspense is strong in all three films, with some twists and turns to keep you tuned in!

The French Noir Collection Blu-ray from Kino is a nice package. There are two dual-layered Blu-ray discs in this set, with Speaking of Murder having its own disc. The release has a cool slipcover to boot! Kino Lorber advertised all the three films being restored with new 2K masters.  They do indeed look outstanding with rich textures and lots of details to the scenery. Black levels are nice and dark with milky whites. The grey scale also looks balanced. Worth mentioning is that Witness in the City is widescreen, but slightly too dark, but nothing all that distracting or hard to see. All three films show solid contrast with each film looking free of print damages, with film grain being present throughout!

Kino uses a French DTS-HD master audio 2.0 soundtrack for their Blu-ray. The dialogue for all three movies is perfectly clear. The audio for all three was not aggressive sounding in any way, shape, or form. The background noises were perfectly balanced with the dialogue with nothing coming off as too dominating. The musical scores were also pleasant to listen to and enjoyable. The music for Speaking of Murder was courtesy of Denis Kieffer, The Back to the Wall score was from Richard Cornu, while the score for Witness in the City was by Barney Wilen. There are also some great moments where there is no music with the goings-on which made some scenes all the better. No drop-offs, crackling or other issues were detected. English subtitles are offered for this release.

The Kino Blu-ray offers some French-language film trailers that includes Speaking of Murder and Back to the Wall.

This trio of French films in this set are terrific and look absolutely stunning on Blu-ray. The lack of extras should not deter any fans from owning this collection! This set should sit proudly with the other Film Noir Collections and French films that Kino has released in the past year! Highly recommended!

French Noir Collection [Speaking of Murder, Back to the Wall, Witness in the City]

Director- Gilles Grangier (Speaking of Murder) Édouard Molinaro (Back to the Wall, Witness to the City)

Cast- Jean Gabin, Jeanne Moreau, Lino Ventura, Marcel Bozzuffi, Gérard Oury, Sandra Milo, Annie Girardot, Paul Frankeur, Gérard Buhr, Jean Lefebvre, Franco Fabrizi, Micheline Luccioni

Country of Origin- France

Distributor – Kino Lorber

Number of Discs – 2

Reviewed by – David Steigman

Date –12/1/2022