Claude Chabrol's Landru (1963)

This is one of Chabrol's earlier films and from a fait divers, starring a very heavily made-up (in fact so much so as to look rather ridiculous) Charles Denner as Henri Landru, the man who during World War I took advantage of the scarcity of men to woo, rob and incinerate a number of vulnerable women. He continued to claim his innocence right up to and beyond his death sentence.

Woman follows woman, met at Luxembourg through small ads or discreetly chased in the street, only to end in his oven, the smell of which appalls the English neighbours, but inexplicably they don't make a fuss about it. The number of women and the shots of the smoking chimney tended to bore me, although the trial scenes – in which Landru continued to proclaim his innocence and make fun of the court – are very interesting in a macabre kind of way. Very far from Chabrol's best, but still watchable: once.