Crossroads lead places, but in themselves are just passing places where many activities can be carried out, as Maigret (Pierre Renoir), in this – one of Renoir's early talkies – will show. Godard rated this film as a very important example of a film policier.
There are just three houses at the crossroads: the garage of Oscar (André Dignimont); the house of insurance agent Émile Michonnet (Jean Gehret) and his wife Michèle (Lucie Vallat); and the house of the apparent Danish brother and sister Carl Andersen (Georges Koudria), who is a decorative designer, and Else (Winna Winfried).
And then the body of a Dutch jeweller Goldberg is found in Michonnet's car, but in the Andersens' garage. It will take Maigret a day, but mainly a day and a night, to discover that the initial obvious suspect Carl is just a stool pigeon in a deadly game in which his 'sister' Else is his second(?) wife; that the garage is a front to hide criminal activities; that Else is far from innocent, but that her first husband Guido (Manuel Rabby) is the real criminal, etc: quite a can of worms for the first filmic version of Maigret to open.
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