Serie Noire

Série noire (1979) is a French crime drama you can watch online on iFILM. Director Alain Corneau dropped a Jim Thompson pulp novel into the bleak suburbs of Paris and handed the lead to Patrick Dewaere, who plays Franck, a door-to-door salesman coming apart at the seams.

Franck drags a suitcase of cheap goods around the outskirts, talking to himself and shadowboxing nobody. Inside one shabby house, an old woman offers a strange trade — merchandise for her sixteen-year-old niece, Mona, played by Marie Trintignant. The girl clings to Franck and plants an idea: kill the aunt, take the money she keeps hidden. He says yes, and nothing unfolds the way he pictured it.

Dewaere is almost unbearable here, twitchy and raw — one of his finest performances, made only a few years before his own death. Corneau films it cold and without pity, a noir about a small man who mistakes a crime for a way out. Not the pick for an easy night in. Stream Série noire (1979) online on iFILM.