Last Known Address (Blu-ray Review)
Director
José GiovanniRelease Date(s)
1970 (October 14, 2025)Studio(s)
Valoria Films/Cité Films/Parme Productions/Simar Films/Rizzoli Film (Kino Lorber Studio Classics)- Film/Program Grade: A-
- Video Grade: A
- Audio Grade: A
- Extras Grade: B-
Review
It may not be great cinematic art, but Last Known Address (Dernier domicile connu, 1970) is an excellent police procedural, and a fine vehicle for its star, the great Lino Ventura.
Ventura is Marceau Léonetti, a veteran Parisian cop unjustly demoted after arresting the irresponsible, drunk-driving son of an influential attorney. After a montage of stopping terrorists and shooting it out with bad guys in his former position, at his new post there’s a charming scene of a bored Léonetti helping a small boy recover his stolen prized pigeons. Later, Léonetti assigned to arrest perverts a local movie theaters, with neophyte officer Jeanne (Marlène Jobert, of Rider on the Rain and the mother of Eva Green) acting as bait. These scenes are not only amusing they dramatize their growing respect for one another.
An old colleague provides a new if seemingly hopeless assignment: locate witness Roger Martin, the only chance of securing a conviction against crime lord Soramon (Guy Héron), the elusive Martin in hiding since Soramon’s arrest five years ago. No one even knows what Martin looks like, or anything else about it, leaving Léonetti and Jeanne with but a single clue—Martin’s last known address. To detail how this investigation proceeds would be to spoil a large portion of the fun—see the film.
Last Known Address is not terribly original but it is very well done, especially in realistically capturing the sometimes-boring leg work of police detection. In one montage, for instance, Léonetti and Jeanne must sift through thousands of pages of pharmacy records from dozens of small businesses. Lino Ventura started out in French noir thrillers mostly playing well-dressed but deadly henchmen, but as he got older he shifted over to world-weary flic (policemen) and detectives, of which few actors had anything approaching to his great appeal. His broken-nosed, barrel-chested veteran of the force makes an intriguing sharp contrast to Marlène Jobert’s beginner, she tiny, short-haired and petite, so much so the camera often follows her scurrying off after him like a puppy.
They may be opposites—he dark and middle-aged, she fair-skinned, freckly and full of youthful energy and innocence—but he’s never once condescending toward her like, say, the Clint Eastwood-Tyne Daly relationship in The Enforcer, the third Dirty Harry film. There’s a teacher-student aspect to their work, but he subtly encourages her, giving her space to learn and treating her as an equal while also being protective when he needs to; he even entertains her with little sleight-of-hand tricks. A back story about Léonetti’s past is mentioned and there are hints of romance, but these are only hinted at. But, indeed, so appealing are they and so engrossing is their search for the missing witness, that only about three-quarters of the way through the film does one realize the danger they’ve put themselves into, and at that point the movie becomes genuinely suspenseful.
The cast is excellent, with Michel Constantin playing one of Soramon’s goons watching their every move. He does something I’ve never seen before: he puts out his cigarettes on the steering wheel of his car. Another great actor, Paul Crauchet (Army of Shadows) plays an eccentric, henpecked former neighbor of the missing witness. His private chat with Jeanne at a café exemplifies a big part of Last Known Address’s appeal—he reveals only a few minor clues but as a character he’s fascinating.
Mostly, though, it’s the picture’s realistic, deglamorized approach to policework and the close bond that quickly develops, also realistically, between Léonetti and Jeanne, that puts the film over. Given their thankless, hopeless task, the pair work with what they’ve got, with José Giovanni’s direction (he wrote Classe tous risques, one of Ventura’s best films) and cinematography of Étienne Becker (son of director Jacques), along with François de Roubaix’s lively score, keeps even their most unpromising, routine enquiries intriguing.
Kino deserves a lot of credit for releasing batches of French titles on a regular basis. (Amusingly, it’s often one Lino Ventura, one Alain Delon, and one Jean-Paul Belmondo.) Last Known Address is presented in an outstanding 4K restoration done by StudioCanal. The 1.66:1 widescreen color film looks great throughout, probably far better than the original theatrical screenings. The nighttime streets of Paris with their neon signage is particularly vivid. The DTS-HD Master Audio (2.0 mono) is also fine, supported by excellent optional English subtitles on this Region “A” encoded disc.
Extras are limited to a trailer and a new audio commentary by film historians Howard S. Berger, Steve Mitchell, and Nathaniel Thompson.
Last Known Address doesn’t really break any new ground on its overworked genre, but does it so well it doesn’t really matter. This character-driven, ultimately quite suspenseful film is excellent, and a fine vehicle for its stars. Highly recommended.
- Stuart Galbraith IV