A French noir produced right after the war in 1946 Panique is film about suspicion and mob injustice. Michel Simon plays Monsieur Hire, an aloof reclusive man who lives in a hotel where the residents of the neighborhood dislike him for the solitary and unfriendly manner. Life in the neighborhood is upended when as a carnival is setting up a woman is found murdered in a nearby field. The murderer, Capoulade, played by  Max Dalban, and his girlfriend, Alice, played by Viviane Romance, a woman Monsieur Hire had become infatuated with, manipulate the neighborhood’s distrust of Hire, attempting to place the blame for the murder on him.

Panique, though it never mentions or deals with the war or France’s occupation under Nazi rule, is seen by many as a statement about the behavior of people during the war. The fact that Hire is Jewish gives credence to this interpretation as mob mentality and the neighborhood rumor filled imaginations turn violent against a man whose only crime is being socially different.

With a brief running time of 91 minutes the film doesn’t waste footage with needlessly complex backstory or set-ups. The mystery of the murderer’s identity is for the audience quickly dispatched allowing the story of Hire, Alice, and the mob to progress without undue burdens.

Filmed in black-and-white by cinematographer Nicholas Hayer, Panique doesn’t not draw on the heritage of German expressionism like most classical noir films, but rather presents the movie’s subjects in stark realism rather then with exaggerated and stylized photography. The film was based on a novel and remade as Monsieur Hire in 1989.

An enjoyable excursion into noir from the country that coined the genre’s name, Panique is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel.