I had heard of Director André Cayatte but never seen any of his films.
I have to say that I never expected a masterpiece of sheer honesty as I have watched in A CHACUN SON ENFER. The story is completely credible and there are times during the course of the movie when I felt that I was in among those characters. Dialogue is very realistic, character buildup too.
The ending is implacaby logical if far from pleasant.
The whole film is anchored in Annie Girardot's sublime performance - why she did not get an Oscar nomination for this film I will never know. Fernand Ledoux, as Girardot's father in law, is memorably cynical - more concerned with the ransom money than with the abduction victim. Bernard Fresson and, in particular, Stéphane Hillel, are also a class apart. On the downside, the police inspector played by Hardy Kruger seems a little bit too late on the scene, and too dettached, unemotional... and surplus.
Recommended viewing if you want to watch a credible piece of cinema and not some fly by night, pie in the sky formulaic piece of trash of the type that we all see more and more often these days. 9/10.
