Dirty Money [DVD] [Region 1] [US Import] [NTSC]

Un Flic was Melville's last film and most crtics think his worst. That may be true but Melville's worst is better than most other directors best. The films opening sequence is also it's best, as four gangsters sit in an American car on a rainy French seafrount waiting to rob a bank. The robbery and the getaway are a masterpeace of economy with a minimum of dialogue but lots of atmosphere.

American actors Richard Crenna and Michael Conrad (Phil from Hill Street Blues) play two of criminals and Alain Delon plays the cop out to get them.

As with all of Melville's films the plot is secondary to the atmosphere and the way men, particulary criminals, relate to each other.

In a later robbery the bad guys rob a diamond smuggler on a moving train.
The special efects during this robbery are poor by today's standard and even by the standards of the time. Yet do not let this put you off. The action and figures may be stylised, all Melville's gangsters wear overcoats or raincoats, hats, drive American cars and drink wiskey, but the overall efect overides any faults. Melville was also always clear that his films were not intended to be a realistic portrait of the French underworld.

If you like your crime films blood soaked with massive gunfights and explosions then forget this film or any of Melville's others. If you want something a bit more inteligent give it a couple of hours.

This film is interesting for lots of reasons. It is clear that Melville was suffering budget problems but there is much of merit here. Take the opening. A bank robbery goes wrong and one of the gang is shot and is dying. The film is about what follows.

Tarrantino used this for the opening of Reservoir Dogs, a wonderful case of Melville who adored Hollywood being repaid by Hollywood. Even the cars are American with the clothing reflecting this transatlantic theme. Melville was a brave man in the war, he knew that life is in shades of grey and this shows in his characterisation and for me this film is typical Melville with the (predictable) but inevitable ending which unfolds like a Greek tragedy. Just really good cinema.

French critics have coined and used the expression film noir and série noire for the American movies that came in after the war had ended for France in 1944. The French themselves had and continued a tradition of the film noir: Jacques Becker, Marcel Carné, Henri-Georges Clouzot, Jules Dassin, Julien Duvivier, Melville, others, and later Nouvelle Vague directors Godard, Malle and Truffaut.

Un flic (1972) is Jean-Pierre Melville's (1917-1973) last film, preceded by the perhaps better known Le samouraï (1967) and Le cercle rouge (1970), and holds his equal. Alain Delon, once more, this time the key figure, as a detective inspector of police. Not much of a talker, but alert, a good shot, occasionally dishing out some physical treatment. Delon, counter to Catherine Deneuve, is a good and versatile actor, while Miss Deneuve is just beautiful and mainly acts through her eyelashes.

Then the gangsters, a lot of well-known French actors, with a core group of four, plus a night-club owner, and a female transvestite colleague of Miss Deneuve, all actually in it together. Delon only realises the full extent of the network at the end. The film nicely contrasts the routine night patrols of the detective (and his second), who are on call, and the longer rhythm of the preparation of coups by the gangsters.

There are two such coups in the film: One, on a bank in Western France. Quite an intricate coup, but the bank robbery has one of the gangster wounded through a lung shot. He needs hospitalisation, and an evacuation attempt by the gangster remains unsuccessful. The second is a helicopter/train(roof) theft, with some extraordinary camera work. This time, the chief gangster is caught, and - well, he talks. He is eventually shot by the inspector at a handover of loot going foul.

PS Ginette Vincendeau, a French film academic and writer, has written a seminal study - Jean-Pierre Melville: An American in Paris - which is reviewed by LGwriter as Trenchant study of Melville (June 14, 2004) on amazon.com (ie US). Very helpful, both.