A brilliant Depardieu composes a sadder and more melancholical commissioner in Maigret. This task is not easy, especially since, before him, Jean Gabin managed to engrave the iconic character in the cinematic memory (his last appearance dates back to 1958). “Gerard,” says director Patrice Leconte in an interview in Le Figaro, “has weight, and I’m not talking about physical weight. Depardieu's silence, his calm, his humanity, make him an ideal Maigret, the one I dreamed of [...] What interests Maigret is not so much to discover the culprits, but rather to immerse himself in an unknown universe, to discover the relationships that bind people.”
Before making Maigret famous, Belgian writer Georges Simenon had already signed 200 "popular" novels with various pseudonyms. But because he had new contracts with publishers, he sought refuge on a boat in the port of Delfzjil and invented a new character: “After an hour I began to see the strong and impassive body of a gentleman whom I considered an acceptable commissioner, and during that day I added some accessories to the character: a pipe, a bowler hat, a heavy coat with a velvet collar.
And given the wet cold I was suffering in my barge, I also gave him an old cast iron stove in his office.” The legendary Maigret now has a statue in his hometown, as well as more than 70 films and about 400 teleworks inspired by 75 novels and 28 novellas, texts that the writer dictated and whose editing lasted no more than two weeks. Simenon sold 600 million copies, becoming the most translated Francophone author, after Hergé, Tintin's inventor. Commissioner Maigret, a taciturn police investigator based in the Quai des Orfèvres, loves stew, especially the one cooked by his caring wife, who always awaits him in the house on Richard-Lenoir Boulevard.
He wanders through the streets with his hands in his pocket, questioning any psychological motives that might have instigated a murder; sometimes he stops in a bistro for a beer or a calvados. The Maigret method makes him a very different investigator from his colleagues, convinced that “we need to know the environment in which the crime was committed, the type of life, the habits of the people involved, whether they are victims, guilty or mere witnesses.”
He does not judge or condemn and has nothing to do with caricaturals: “Without a moustache or double shoes, he wears good clothes, shaves every day and has clean hands.”
Depardieu, an ideal choice for a new type of Maigret, adores the character, explaining in interviews that he has much in common with this old-fashioned commissar. “I’ve always loved him very much. He is a typical French figure, an old-fashioned police man with great humanity, a person who is very close to me, a friend with a way of doing the things I admire.
I appreciate his instincts, his listening skills. I love how he moves around people and how he behaves in the house, his relationship with his wife, his lust for the juicy dishes that she cooks for him with love. I know the extraordinary literary value of Simenon's work and therefore I was very happy to embark with Lecount on this journey.
Maigret is, first of all, his silence. And in this dimension of him I find a great part of myself and of my desire today for calm, for solitude. Simenon makes Maigret speak through his silence."
Maigret, dir. Patrice Leconte will be screened on Friday, in Unirii Square Open Air, from 9:45PM.