Touchez Pas Au Grisbi [1956] [DVD] [1954]

The film starts with Max (Jean Gabin) and Riton (Rene Dary) as a couple of aging crooks who have pulled off a bullion robbery which will allow them to retire. Riton however does not want to retire he wants to carry on chasing women and clubing the night away. Max however knows that time is catching up with him and looks forward to leaving his life of crime.

In steps Angelo (Lino Ventura) as a younger gangster to wishes to cut himself into their grisbi (loot). Angelo has Riton kidnapped and offers to trade him for the stolen gold. Will Max be true to his mate Riton and his underworld code or will he keep the gold and be rid of Riton who as he says has been holding him back for years? The answer is never in doubt as Max sets out to free Riton. Max's underworld code demands loyalty to ones friends above everything else.

What makes this film so great is Jean Gabin as Max. Max may be getting on but he not a man you would cross. He thinks nothing of torturing a rival gangster or hitting a woman if loyalty to Riton demands it.

What also sets this film apart is that we see why Max is a criminal. It is because crime does pay. Max has two flats, he has good clothes, eats at smart restaurants and sleeps with beautiful women. Compare this with White Heat where Jimmy Cagney spends most of time hinding out in the mountains even after a succesful robbery.

The fifties and sixties were a golden age for French crime films and Touchez Pas au Grisbi (Hands of the Loot) is one of the best.

Seen today, Touchez Pas Au Grisbi seems like Jean Gabin's last great role, but in 1954 it was seen as his comeback after a slew of disappointing post-war films that were generally fairly average on their own merits even when not compared to his remarkable run of pre-war classics. Certainly he was the right actor at the right time when his career, like the old-school thief he plays, was beginning to look like it was over. The old Gabin is still recognisable but the rot has set in, and it's that combination of a class act that has outlived his time that makes his perfect casting performance so remarkable. He's a bit of a moaner and feels his age: constantly weary, he's got to that time in his life when he wants to go to bed early because if he stays up after midnight he feels like he's working overtime. Far from the doomed romantics he specialised in during his Thirties prime, he's a faded man edging into the shadows - in one remarkable shot even a lit match casts no light on his face - in a film that takes a lot of the glamour off both its star and its genre. He and his longtime, not too smart partner have pulled their last job before the film even starts, and the inevitable violence and tragedy come from his attempts to keep his newly acquired `pension' - the grisbi (loot) of the title - from rival crooks.

There's no romance or honour among thieves here. From the clubs where the `dancers' do little more than walk across the stage to the restaurants that shun the slumming socialite crowd, it's a mediocre, artificial world they inhabit, where packs of criminals aren't loyal unless it suits them, where almost everyone either expresses disappointment or hides behind insincere clichéd expressions of admiration and loyalty. For director Jacques Becker how his low lives go about the everyday business of living is as important as the plot, and strangely it's surprisingly compelling too despite what is happening often being so mundane. You can feel the cold of the rarely used apartment he and René Dary's Riton eat their crackers and pate in before breaking out their pajamas, brushing their teeth and going to bed early just as vividly as you can feel the crisp night air of a roadside hostage exchange that goes disastrously wrong.

If that sounds perhaps too grim and austere, the film is anything but. Beautifully directed by Becker, whose reputation has sadly faded over the years - indeed, for a long time this, perhaps his most famous film, was out of circulation in English speaking territories - and featuring Lino Ventura in his first role and an early appearance by Jeanne Moreau, it's one of the best French thrillers ever made and it's easy to see why it's been such a huge influence on the crime genre. The UK DVD is a good presentation, but not unexpectedly, Criterion's Region 1 NTSC DVD outdoes it as far as supplements go: a lengthy extract from French TV series Cinéastes de Notre Temps, an entertaining and insightful 2002 interview with supporting player Daniel Cauchy, who reveals why his character really didn't make it to the film's finale, a 1972 interview with Lino Ventura, a 1978 interview with composer Jean Wiener, the original French theatrical trailer and detailed liner notes.

Jean Gabin plays an ageing villain who has the grisbi (loot) from a bullion robbery in the Paris of 1953. Betrayed by his partner's young girlfriend (Jeanne Moreau) to the nasty Angelo (Lino Ventura who was to chase Gabin again in The Sicilian Clan) Gabin has to come up with a plan to recover friends and retain the loot. The film has a feel of Bob le Flameur meets Rififi but plenty of its own individual twists and turns. If you are looking for a grittily realistic gangster movie then you are in the wrong area, but you are still in for an entertaining film.