![]() Touchez pas au grisbi, perhaps more than any other of Becker’s works, serves as a meta-narrative about the director, a running commentary on the life and times of the man who made it.īorn in Paris on 15 September 1906, Becker’s ascension in the French film industry was gradual and deliberate, marked by stints as an assistant, as a beleaguered resident of Vichy France, a prisoner in a German POW camp, and eventually by the late 1940s as a fledgling director-in-chief. But the authorial hand behind what might’ve been a hoary cliché gives Touchez pas au grisbi a classic (and classicist) status it might not have enjoyed otherwise. As also enacted in films such as Carlito’s Way (Brian De Palma, 1993) and Belly (Hype Williams, 1998), the plot of the hardened outlaw committing his last caper is a trope of the crime genre. “You see the bags under our eyes? Do you think we’re a pretty sight?” Whether paying-off a restaurateur who may be implicated in his criminal exploits, putting up an accomplice on the run for a night in his secret apartment, or torturing a younger buck for information, his unhurried expression rarely changes. I want to retire,” he tells his right-hand man. Played by Jean Gabin, Max summarises his character’s frame-of-mind in no vague terms: “I was fed up with all our bullshit years ago. Touchez pas au grisbi is the story of a gangster’s compulsion to commit one more heist before retiring to a life of bubbly and well-proportioned broads. ![]() Becker’s 1954 film Touchez pas au grisbi (1954), often translated into English as “Don’t Touch the Loot”, therefore appears as a loaded artistic statement by an ageing don who died shortly before younger radicals would, in the eyes of many critics and historians, render him obsolete. So wide is the shadow cast on the country’s cinema by Truffaut, Godard and the ilk of Cahiers du Cinéma that even avowed masters of the medium like Jacques Becker, Agnès Varda and Louis Malle get blotted out retroactively by a culture industry which elevates the pyrotechnics of a À bout de souffle (1960) or a Jules et Jim (1962) over the staid intensity of a Le Trou (Becker, 1960) or a Cléo de 5 à 7 (Varda, 1962). ![]() It is also known as Grisbi, Honour Among Thieves and Hands Off the Loot.In the light of the impending nouvelle vague, reflection on any aspect of post-WWII French film threatens to become a referendum. Gabin won Best Actor award at the Venice Film Festival in 1954 for his archetypal world-weary performance.Īlso in the cast are Gaby Basset, Daniel Cauchy, Paul Frankeur, Dora Doll, Vittorio Sanipoli, Marilyn Bufferd, Paul Barge, Alain Bouvette, Denise Clair, Angelo Dessy, Michel Jourdan, Paul Oettly, Jean Riveyre, Delia Scala, Silvestri and Lucilla Solivani. Ventura and Moreau complete the star trio and their casting also helps to complete the ideal lowlife crook movie panorama.ĭirector Becker and his fellow script-writers Albert Simonin and Maurice Griffe whip up the atmosphere and suspense, while turning their attention to tackling the themes of loyalty and treachery, and the character study of man desperately staving off the onset of old age. A young Jeanne Moreau plays cabaret dancer Josy, Riton’s mistress, who has found a new lover in Angelo. Lino Ventura also stars in his film début as Max’s rival, the dangerous gangster Angelo, who would murder to find the loot (grisbi). Touchez Pas au Grisbi ***** (1954, Jean Gabin, Jeanne Moreau, Lino Ventura, Gaby Basset, Daniel Cauchy, René Dary, Dora Doll, Paul Frankeur) – Classic Movie Review 5007Ī sad and smokey bitter-sweet Gallic atmosphere of tired desperation pervades co-writer/ director Jacques Becker’s 1954 wry classic French noir gangster crime thriller.Ī movie based on Albert Simonin’s novel was always going to be good, but it is lifted a couple more notches higher by the luminous star presence of Jean Gabin as Max le Menteur, one of a gang of crooks who has stolen eight gold bars of 12 kg each worth 50 million francs, along with his best friend Riton (René Dary) and hidden them away for their retirement. But Riton is kidnapped and their stash of gold bars is demanded as ransom.
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