Tonight's Movie: Maigret Sets a Trap (1958) - A Kino Lorber Blu-ray Review

Last month I reviewed Jean Gabin in the title role of the very enjoyable police detective movie MAIGRET SEES RED (1963).

MAIGRET SEES RED recently had a single-title Blu-ray release by Kino Lorber; now that film has also been released as part of Kino Lorber's three-film Inspector Maigret Collection, along with MAIGRET SETS A TRAP (1958) and MAIGRET AND THE ST. FIACRE CASE (1959).

MAIGRET SETS A TRAP, also known as INSPECTOR MAIGRET or, in France, MAIGRET TEND UN PIEGE, was the first of Gabin's three Maigret films.

This time around Police Inspector Maigret is working to solve the case of a serial killer, as women are stabbed in the streets of Paris at night, their clothes left in shreds.

Maigret's focus gradually turns to a butcher shop and its connections to architect/decorator Marcel Maurin (Jean Desailly), Marcel's unfaithful wife Yvonne (Annie Girardot), and his mother (Lucienne Bogaert).

As was the case with MAIGRET SEES RED, I found MAIGRET SETS A TRAP to be a thoroughly enjoyable procedural. The movie runs just under two hours but it flies by. Time spent with Inspector Maigret and this cast is time well spent.

As I shared in my previous review of MAIGRET SEES RED, Gabin commands attention. Maigret calmly smokes his pipe and chats with suspects and witnesses, appearing not to suspect anyone in particular but gradually revealing he's quite cagey; bit by bit, his targets slowly reveal themselves as they talk with the seemingly unassuming detective.

Gabin's Maigret is almost COLUMBO-like in the way that we realize Maigret's apologetic, casual, and friendly interviews aren't casual in the least; he has keyed in on certain things and his investigation is headed somewhere ahead of the viewer realizing it. Yet once we're in on things, everything Maigret has noticed makes sense.

I especially enjoyed Lino Ventura in the cast as one of Maigret's colleagues, Inspector Torrence; it's a relatively small role yet adds color. When Torrence turns up at the end of a prolonged sequence involving Maurin filling out a form, I laughed out loud. (Incidentally, Torrence is played by Marcel Bozzufi in MAIGRET SEES RED.)

Like Gabin, Ventura is an actor I've come to really appreciate over the past year (for instance, in THE BEAST IS LOOSE), and I've been eagerly collecting both actors' films -- a good number of which are available from Kino Lorber.

I also appreciated brief looks into Maigret's personal life via scenes with his wife Louise (Jeanne Boitel); indeed, a comment Louise makes early on gives Maigret a significant flash of insight into the killer. This is the only one of the three films in which Boitel appears.

The 4K Studiocanal restoration looks and sounds great. Shadowy Paris by night has probably never looked better.

This set is presented as a special edition with a cardboard slipcase. Blu-ray disc extras consist of a commentary track by Howard S. Berger and Nathaniel Thompson; the trailer; and trailers for the other two Maigret films in the set.

I'll be reviewing MAIGRET AND THE ST. FIACRE CASE in the near future; that said, based on the first two films I've seen I highly recommend Kino Lorber's Inspector Maigret Collection.

Thanks to Kino Lorber for providing a review copy of this Blu-ray collection.

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