Jean Daskalidès was an amazing man. He was in turns (and sometimes at once) a jazz musician, the manager of Leonidas (the famous Belgian chocolate company), a film producer and director and a... gynecologist! An eccentric, intriguing, multifaceted personality indeed! As far as the movies are concerned, Daskalidès's debut was encouraging; among the shorts he made, a few were noticeable by either their tenderness (" De diefstal "), their cruelty (" Mundo Carne ") or their humor (" Bibi "). His transition to feature film was less fortunate though. And yet when in 1972 the " 6 rue du Calvaire " project was initiated, there was reasonable hope that it might result in a fine atmospheric movie. Alas, the chocolate tycoon's first (and last for that matter) fiction feature was a real disappointment: it was indeed made so amateurishly that on this occasion Daskalidès appeared more as a jack-of-all-trades than the protean figure he was wont to be. Not that this noir crime film is inept. The subject (Hugo, a French engineer, accommodated in his Flemish friend's home, unveils a terrible secret in the family) has potentialities. Clouzot, Chabrol or Polanski at the helm would doubtless have made this adaptation of "De Dames Verbrugge", a novel by Roger d'Exsteyl, a hair-raising and haunting experience. But not Daskalidès who as it happens proves unable to create a real atmosphere of fear. This is due to the director's clumsiness: he indeed makes nearly all the beginner's mistakes: the cinematography is undistinguished, the natural setting (Ghent in East Flanders) filmed in an indifferent way, the editing approximate (uneven rhythm and even worse, padding: oh, those useless night club scenes!) and the acting mediocre (with only one exception, Lut Tomsin, who literally exudes frustration and bitterness). Even top-billed Marie-José Nat is a bad choice. She may have attracted one or two more spectators to the theaters and - agreed - she is very beautiful but why choose a jet black haired Corsican to play a Flemish woman? And why does she always express herself in French while her brother and sisters speak Flemish? Furthermore, the actress can't live up to the ambiguity of her character : she is all right as long as she has to give life the sweet side of her personality but when it comes to her darker side she is not frightening at all, which is quite a handicap. In these conditions, it does not take long before you realize you are doomed to be delivered more tedious than exciting moments and you gradually lose interest. Viewing his own film must have been a reality check for Jean Daskalidès himself: he never directed another feature after that. But he went on producing movies signed by others, one of which is a masterpiece, "Dust" (1985) by Marion Hansel.
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