Dir: Serge Moati
Star: Klaus Kinski, Bernard Blier, Marie Dubois, Jean-Luc Bideau
a.k.a. Nuit d’or

Two years after supposedly being disposed of, in circumstances which are, at least initially, very murky, Michel Fournier (Kinski) comes back from the grave. And, as you can imagine, he’s not happy. Fournier announces his return with notes and creepy dolls, sent to those responsible for his alleged “death.” They include his brother, Henri (Bideau), and police commissioner Pidoux (Blier), who got Fournier accused of being the “golden chain killer,” for (again, supposedly) murdering a little girl.  Muddying the water further is Michel’s previous relationship with Henri’s wife Veronique (Dubois), which led to a daughter, Katherine.

Michel abducts the young girl, and uses her as leverage – though quite what his endgame is with this kidnapping, remains rather opaque. It may be an attempt to rekindle the flame with Veronique, though child kidnapping seems a bit of a poorly conceived option. Indeed, the same could be said for quite a few other elements, such as the “Nuit d’Or” casino which gives the film its title, and where it both opens and closes. While there are suggestions that Michel was a heavy gambler, it’s never clear how this quite fits into the overall scenario.

Similarly, there’s the weird, almost apocalyptic, religious cult to which he has ties: The Temple of the Son of the True Light. They hold their services in a car-park decked out with drapes, quote heavily from the Book of Revelations and their leader appears to be a midget in a coffin. Michel ends up using fellow disciple Sister Andrée (Anny Duperey) to watch over Katherine, though her stricter approach to their captive triggers its own problems. It’s perhaps significant that Michel ends up being too damn weird for the cult, who turn him in to the cops, via a disembodied voice. Imagine, if you will, Jim Jones throwing his hands up and saying, “Who the hell is this weirdo? I don’t want anything to do with him!” 

The scenes with Michel opposite Katherine certainly possess disturbing elements, as shown in the still on the right. Some of this is hindsight, in the light of subsequent accusations by Klaus’s real daughter, Pola. But it’s also unsettling in the context of the movie, with the allegations regarding Michel as a killer – apparently high-profile enough, he’s recognized by a woman in the street while waiting for his daughter. But like the other elements mentioned above, these just don’t gel into anything approaching a coherent whole. This could be a decent policier, following Pidoux’s efforts to solve the kidnapping. Or been told from the point of view of Henri and Veronique, as their marriage unravels under the pressure of events. Or been a roaring rampage of revenge for Michel, getting his own back on those who wronged him. It nods towards each angle, yet is unsatisfactory as any of them, perhaps not helped by a 78-minute running time that restricts much development.

Director Moati has spent most of his career in TV movies and/or documentaries, and I do suspect this is the kind of material which would need a far stronger hand to control it. Some places have compared it to an Italian giallo, and while I can see where this is coming from, it doesn’t quite have the atmosphere, combining horrific elements with eroticism, which I’d generally expect. That said, there is one scene which anyone who has watched this will remember: the puppet show Michel puts on for Kathleen, to explain the situation to the child. This includes marionettes in the form of all the major players, including one of Michel/Kinski (shown, top) which is both disturbingly creepy and lifelike. Or perhaps, because it’s lifelike. The scene in question is below: since it’s unsubtitled in the clip, here is the narration Michel provides.

“Once upon a time, there was a man called Michel. He was alone. All by himself. No one loved him. His father, Charles, was always finding what he did was wrong. His brother, Henri, was jealous because Michel had met before him a very beautiful queen. Véronique. Queen Véronique loved Michel very much. So… Charles and Henri wanted to make Michel disappear. But Michel was not dead. He was in Africa. There, all alone, he was thinking about Queen Véronique and the little princess Catherine. You. He loves them so much. He says to the queen, “Come.” He says to the princess, “Come.” All three go away. And they are happy together. Sleep, Catherine. Sleep…”

There’s a decent supporting cast, also including Maurice Ronet as the owner/operator of the casino. Blier would go on to work with Kinski again, making his penultimate movie appearance in Kinski’s Paganini.. Michel’s mother is played by the venerable German actress, Elisabeth Flickenschildt, in her final role, who had worked with Klaus on a couple of the Edgar Wallace films during the sixties, including The Indian Scarf. One oddity: though speaking his own dialogue in French, when shown in his home country, Kinski’s voice was dubbed back into German, by Hans-Michael Rehberg.

The movie has the germs of some interesting ideas, and isn’t short on style, either. It’s nice to see Klaus firmly front and center, and his performance works, because Kinski is a well-cast choice for the character. However, the film as a whole never meshes the elements together. It feels to me the biggest problem is a script that apparently can’t decide what it considers important, and ends up leaving all its components under-developed and, thus, underwhelming. The ending doesn’t complete the film with an exclamation point, or even a full-stop, more like a set of ellipses, petering out in a way which could hardly be a greater disappointment if it tried. It remains worth a look for the acting, and for the puppet-show, though I wonder, what happened to the Kinski marionette? I’m a little surprised it didn’t go on to have its own, successful career as a cheaper (and, certainly, more amenable!) alternative to the real thing…