Probably the first time the world got a taste of Henri-Georges Clouzot’s cinematic talent wasn’t in his role as auteur but when he served merely as screenwriter for Georges Lacombe’s early French noir Le dernier de six (US: The Last of the Six), which was followed by a more comedic sequel (L’Assassin habite au 21) which served as Clouzot’s directorial debut the following year. Co-starring Clouzot’s wife at the time, Suzy Delair, who would go on to play practically the same character in Clouzot’s later Quai des Orfevres (1947), Le dernier de six follows the fates of six Parisian friends who pool their jackpot winnings and go off in six randomly selected directions to attempt to make their fortunes, agreeing (contractually) to reunite in five years and evenly distribute their combined earnings. With a whodunit premise unmistakably similar to Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None (Stanislas-André Steeman’s 1931 source novel was actually published eight years before Christie’s book), the men end up getting murdered one by one, presumably by one of the six who wants to keep all the earnings and assets for himself. Pierre Fresnay stars as chief detective Wensceslas (or Wens), who leads the investigation, his suspicion soon leaning toward the penniless drifter Jean Perlonjour (Jean Chevrier) and successful theater owner Henri Senterre (André Luguet). While Delair plays the inspector’s aspiring singer girlfriend, the larger female role goes to Michèle Alfa as Lolita Gernicot, Perlonjour’s ex-wife and nightclub performer who is now re-married to the just killed Marcel (Lucien Nat) and ends up kidnapped by the mysterious perpetrator. The film is thick with noir atmosphere, culminating in a final chase of trenchcoated men through a maze of underground quarry that resembles but predates Orson Welles’s sewer chase in The Third Man (1949) by eight years. Lacombe and production designer Andrej Andrejew go over the top with the musical numbers, at least once imitating Busby Berkeley’s aerial shots of synchronized dancing bodies, the most insanely spectacular number involving Lolita’s target practice on stage, optical effects sharpening her aim at the enormous glass bulbs held by the company of girls, her gunshots loud enough to drown out the sound of yet another murder being committed in the auditorium.