Cinematic Portraits of Evil: Christian de Chalonge’s Docteur Peti ...

solely on realism and draws from the genres of fantasy and horror. As de Chalonge observes:

The film, based on the historical activity of Dr Marcel Petiot, progressively exposes the double life of a reputable Parisian doctor and family man. The doctor assumes a vampiric persona at night, infusing a horrific referent into the film which serves to fully address the historical situation. The doctor's exploitation of complexities, ambiguities and communication problems under the Vichy regime and his determination to profit from the schizophrenic nature of the French state are vividly presented throughout the film. The exposure of a highly dextrous and expedient systematic murder procedure and the depiction of organised burnings of corpses in Petiot's domestic stove not only offer a vivid account of documented fact but are connotative to the wider context of Holocaust activity. The film, in this sense, engages simultaneously with the Occupation and the Holocaust. De Chalonge presents the prosaic logistics of the practitioner's murders and the comprehensive design of his daily agenda, while subjugating his protagonist to constant ridicule through fantastical and at times farcical representation. It is not so much the iconography (stoves, vaccinations) that becomes the source of horror, but the ‘banalisation’ of such objects that characterise normal, everyday life. That is to say, the narrative focuses not on the imposition of hegemonic power but on one man's personal