This film ranked #87 in Time Out's list of the 100 greatest French films. Click here to see the full list.
Director: Julien Duvivier
‘Panique’ is Julien Duvivier’s most personal and fully realised film. Adapted from a Georges Simenon novel, it more than lives up to its name: an icy nihilistic fable about a solitary eccentric whose strange habits draw increasing suspicion from his paranoid neighbours. Michel Simon’s mesmerising performance and the film’s expressionistic visual style create an atmosphere of mounting anxiety, culminating in a frenetic lynching scene reminiscent of Fritz Lang’s ‘Fury’. Duvivier paints a bleak picture of human nature at its vilest and most cruel.