The best thing in an otherwise ordinary film is this simple one-shot device for showing a plane journey from Paris to an outpost in Mali.
The other maps in the film are far less interesting: A beautiful film, entirely uninterested in the one map it shows, but a beautiful film - and also a very nice kettle.
(With thanks to Moë.) In this slavish imitation of Pépé le Moko (reproducing some sequences of Duvivier's film shot-for-shot and borrowing its actualité footage), the map of Algiers is very similar, and does the same sort of work, locating the viewer 'in a position of mastery' (Charles O'Brien, see here). There is also a brief scene with a hand-drawn map, to add to my collection (see here): This first map lights up to signal a crime reported near Pigalle, initiating the police investigation. The climax of the film shows a car chase that begins in the suburbs east of Paris, 'au carrefour de Pantin', though the first light on the larger map on which the chase will be traced is again at Pigalle: A close up of the map shows lights in the general area of the chase ('...le Pré Saint Gervais... le boulevard Sérurier...'), but this is followed by a longer shot showing the light on in Pigalle again: The radio controller is looking at the right part of the map, and perhaps we can read the light pointing to Pigalle as a narrational reminder of where it all started, though I'm more inclined to think that at its exciting climax the film simply isn't concerned about matching the chase with the map. What concerns me more is the procedural accuracy of this set-up. I can't see that a map able to trace movements in so approximate a manner could be particularly useful to the police. This looks more like a fantasy about tracking of a kind with the more famous set-up in Melville's Le Samourai, twelve years later, which I also think is a fantasy (see here):
315/ 36 Quai des Orfèvres (Olivier Marchal 2004) & Quai des Orfèvres (Henri-Georges Clouzot 1947)16/2/2012 There are two sets of maps, neither of which has the strong connection to plot that the principal maps had in Chinatown (of which The Two Jakes is a sequel).
There are two métro maps in the film, one in a studio set, the other in the real streets of Paris.
The other maps in the film are all in the set representing police headquarters, quai des Orfèvres: |
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