![]() The climax is an airtight roadside face-off that ends in gunfire, grenades exploding, and a car chase, but nearly everything before it, from scenes of gangsters lounging at their exclusive restaurant hang-out to Max and Riton simply sharing wine and bread, are just as slick and satisfying. Becker makes the mundane as compelling as the crackling action in which the film crescendos, masterfully wielding silence and musical cues (Max’s song is a wistful harmonica melody) in tandem with the visual grammar of film noir. Riton, whose young lover (Jeanne Moreau in the femme fatale role) has just taken up with another man closer to her own age, examines himself in the bathroom mirror, and gently pushes at the sides of his eyes, as if he’s trying to remember the smoothness of his younger skin.Ĭonnections aside, this film stands firmly on its own two feet. A sense of late life melancholy is perhaps clearest in the scene where prior to his kidnapping, Max’s friend Riton stays the night at Max’s apartment, and the two are shown in their pajamas getting ready for bed (which immediately recalls the scene in The Irishman where Hoffa and Sheeran spend a night at a hotel together). Though Gabin was twenty years or so younger than De Niro at the time of their respective performances, they share a similar weariness in how they carry and express themselves, and not only that, but their characters also obviously recall one another: Gabin’s Max and De Niro’s Frank are aging gangsters whose loyalty to a friend is tested, and whose looking back on their lives adds a strain of regret to their film’s emotional undercurrents. ![]() After his long-time friend and partner is kidnapped by rivals who want his recently acquired loot, Gabin’s cool, collected, and finely dressed Max is forced to put off retirement just a little bit longer, and potentially choose between saving his pal and his nest egg.ĭespite their differences in scope, the influence of Becker’s film on Scorcese’s latest crime saga is loud and clear. '50 Million Stolen at Orly, Still Not Recovered,' announces a newspaper headline, which brings a knowing smile to Max. “An ambling gangster picture polished to a high gloss.Before there was The Irishman, there was Jacques Becker‘s Touchez Pas au Grisbi, an impeccably crafted crime film from 1954, in which French acting legend Jean Gabin plays a worn out gangster in the twilight moments of his career. Grisbi, in the parlance of the French underworld, means 'loot.' In the case of 1954's Touchez pas au grisbi ('don't touch the loot'), it's a small fortune in gold bars that cool, sophisticated underworld legend Max le Menteur (Jean Gabin) has stolen before the film even opens. Its final scene offers one of the greatest, most bitterly poignant touches of face-saving deception in the history of cinema.” One of the great movies about male friendship its central sequence is a domestic one that presents the earnest rituals of friendship-involving pâté and biscuits, pajamas and toothbrushes -as a setting for life-changing, identity-shattering confidences. “A post-heist film that’s also a story of friendship-and of aging. The film was hugely influential, setting the tone of French policiers for years to come.” “GRISBI contains plenty of the requisite genre elements-double-crossings, violence, kidnappings, gun battles, and the like-but it’s also a pensive meditation on age, friendship, and lost opportunities. Set the rules for the great sequence of underworld movies from Jean-Pierre Melville that followed.” Its well-earned success focused on Max the Liar (Jean Gabin) growing old, his weariness, his first pair of reading glasses, the little habits, the good restaurants, the pleasant absorption of a tired-out hooligan who dreams about retiring into middle-class respectability.” “The beauty of the characters in GRISBI comes from their quietness, from the economy of their movements. “A poignant look at friendship, honor and betrayal among thieves.” “Remains one of the best French policiers-perhaps the best.” ![]() But when moll Jeanne Moreau spills the beans to bad guy Lino Ventura (in his debut), it’s time for a showdown. Gentleman gangster Max and his partner, Riton, pull off their last, most successful heist and find themselves comfortable enough to retire in the style they. Over-the-hill gangster Gabin has just pulled the heist of a lifetime enough grisbi (loot) for a cushy retirement. ![]() Starring Jean Gabin, Jeanne Moreau, Lino Ventura
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