Night at the Crossroads is a 1932 film by Jean Renoir

Jean Renoir

Jean Renoir was a French film director, screenwriter, actor, producer and author. As a film director and actor, he made more than forty films from the silent era to the end of the 1960s...

 based on the novel of the same title (known in English as Maigret at the Crossroads) by Georges Simenon

Georges Simenon

Georges Joseph Christian Simenon was a Belgian writer. A prolific author who published nearly 200 novels and numerous short works, Simenon is best known for the creation of the fictional detective Maigret.-Early life and education:...

 and starring Renoir's brother Pierre Renoir

Pierre Renoir

Pierre Renoir was a French stage and film actor and served briefly as the director of the Théâtre de l'Athénée in Paris, taking over after the death of Louis Jouvet in 1951....

 as Simenon's popular detective, Inspector Maigret.

The French director Jacques Becker

Jacques Becker

Jacques Becker was a French screenwriter and film director.Becker was born in Paris, in an upper class background. During the 1930s he worked as an assistant to director Jean Renoir during his peak period, which produced such cinematic masterpieces as Grand Illusion and The Rules of the Game...

, then apprenticed to Renoir, worked as assistant director

Assistant director

The role of an Assistant director include tracking daily progress against the filming production schedule, arranging logistics, preparing daily call sheets, checking cast and crew, maintaining order on the set. They also have to take care of health and safety of the crew...

 and production manager on the film.

Reputation and influence

Often cited as being Jean Renoir's least well-known sound film

Sound film

A sound film is a motion picture with synchronized sound, or sound technologically coupled to image, as opposed to a silent film. The first known public exhibition of projected sound films took place in Paris in 1900, but decades would pass before sound motion pictures were made commercially...

, Night at the Crossroads has nonetheless maintained a very strong critical reputation. In an article republished as part of André Bazin

André Bazin

André Bazin was a renowned and influential French film critic and film theorist.-Life:Bazin was born in Angers, France, in 1918...

's book on Renoir, the French New Wave

French New Wave

The New Wave was a blanket term coined by critics for a group of French filmmakers of the late 1950s and 1960s, influenced by Italian Neorealism and classical Hollywood cinema. Although never a formally organized movement, the New Wave filmmakers were linked by their self-conscious rejection of...

 critic and filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard

Jean-Luc Godard

Jean-Luc Godard is a French-Swiss film director, screenwriter and film critic. He is often identified with the 1960s French film movement, French Nouvelle Vague, or "New Wave"....

 described it as being "Renoir's most mysterious film" and "the only great French detective movie--in fact, the greatest of all adventure movies."

At a symposium

Symposium

In ancient Greece, the symposium was a drinking party. Literary works that describe or take place at a symposium include two Socratic dialogues, Plato's Symposium and Xenophon's Symposium, as well as a number of Greek poems such as the elegies of Theognis of Megara...

 on the Hungarian filmmaker Béla Tarr

Béla Tarr

-Life:Tarr was born in Pécs, but grew up in Budapest. Both of his parents were close to theatre and film: his father was a scenery designer, while his mother has been working as a prompter at a theater for more than 50 years now...

 held at Facets Multimedia on September 16, 2007, American film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum

Jonathan Rosenbaum

Jonathan Rosenbaum is an American film critic. Rosenbaum was the head film critic for the Chicago Reader from 1987 until 2008, when he retired at the age of 65...

 mentioned that Tarr's then-new feature, The Man from London

The Man From London

The Man from London is a 2007 film by Hungarian director Béla Tarr. It is an adaptation by Tarr and his collaborator-friend László Krasznahorkai of the 1934 French language novel L'Homme de Londres by prolific Belgian writer Georges Simenon...

(also based on a novel by Georges Simenon), was influenced by Night at the Crossroads.