“Touchez Pas au Grisbi” (1954)
Apologies to Marcello Mastroianni and George Clooney, but one of the suavest and debonaire gentleman to ever grace the silver screen was French actor Jean Gabin. Best known to cinephiles for his 30s and 40s films with the great Jean Renoir, Gabin was a big star then, but had a rough couple of decades, until this film put him back on top again. In Jacque Becker’s thriller (translated “Don’t Touch The Loot”) Gabin stars as an aging gentlemanly hood who wants to retire while the getting’s good and thinks that’s the plan after a successful gold bullion heist. However as most of these stories go, getting into the game is easy, leaving it is much more difficult. Soon he learns another rival gangster and brutal crime boss (Lino Ventura, who’ll pop up again shortly) has heard about his score from his girlfriend, a comely lass played by a then-very young Jeanne Moreau. Ventura’s ruthless crime boss gives Gabin a choice to give up the cash or die, and what ensues is a tense game of cat and mouse. ‘Touchez’ can be talky and slow-going, but the second half ratchets up the tension as the stakes are raised and friends are kidnapped, and the explosive finale contains an aces action sequence that is thrilling for its time and still completely engaging. Michael Mann is surely a fan, as you can feel this film’s influence throughout his career.
“The Spanish Prisoner” (1997)
For his fifth directorial effort, David Mamet returned to the world of ruses and confidence men. This time around the mark is Joe Ross (the always-underrated Campbell Scott), a brilliant but naive inventor of the “Process,” a vaguely defined formula which is supposed to predict global markets and, understandably, is worth a fortune. Ross works for Mr. Klein (Ben Gazzara) who promises Ross a big payday is in store as soon as he can sell the “Process.” While in the Caribbean for a meeting with potential investors, Ross meets Jimmy Dell (Steve Martin, shortly before the beginning of his “acting to fund my contemporary art collection and banjo career” period), an insouciantly wealthy stranger. The two meet once more in New York and a friendship ensues. It is at this point that any more of a plot summary would do a disservice to Mamet’s twist-laden script. Interestingly, Mamet decided to shift his usual settings: instead of spending their time in smoky poker lounges and bars, the film’s characters find themselves in country clubs and exclusive eateries, with daytime exteriors taking the place of the dark nighttime alleys of previous Mamet films. While maintaining the familiar Mamet staccato, the characters speak in an affected and polite tone (the film earned a PG rating so the F-bombs of “Glengarry Glen Ross” are nonexistent). This change only serves to highlight one familiar lesson from the film: things are not always what they seem. And for fans of “The Wire” keep your eye out for a brief appearance from the inimitable Senator Clay Davis.
“Thief” (1981)
The “one last job” genre is almost as old as the medium itself, but since Michael Mann’s “Thief,” all filmmakers attempting to explore such a trope haven’t been able to reach the same heights. James Caan is the eponymous schemer, all elbow-grease, and machismo, who finds it hard to rely on rocky alliances when he desperately searches for an exit sign out of his profession. When people are trying to muscle a young, barrel-chested James Caan out of a decent living, you know you’re dealing with some bad dudes. Mann’s classic thriller is a slow-burn, up until a violent climax straight out of the Mann playbook, filled with bad ass masculine histrionics, but an indelible sadness as well. It hasn’t dated as badly as some of Mann’s work in the 1980s either (this means you, “Manhunter”), and is still one of his very best pictures.
“Classe Tous Risques” (1960)
Capable in heartless gangster roles, icy cops or sympathetic crook parts, the versatile Lino Ventura (see above) once again stars in Claude Saudet’s “Classe Tous Risques,” arguably a more tragic and emotional gangster heist film than many from this, sometimes matter-of-fact mien era. Playing a one-time crime boss wanted in his native France, Ventura’s Abel Davos character decides to return once more to see his family. A young associate cum up-and-coming thug (Jean-Paul Belmondo) is sent to help him make the trip across the border and the two bond, especially as the younger man knows the older man by his impressive reputation. While Belmondo does play a faithful liege — the picture is sometimes described as being about their relationship — the law eventually catches up with Davos which makes for heartbreaking circumstances for his wife and children (which in a sense makes it a lonely one-man show). An ever-watchable and absorbing picture, director Claude Sautet is not well known outside this one, but his 1978 picture, “A Simple Story,” starring Romy Schneider, was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.
“Le Cercle Rouge” (1970)
With so many potential entry points into a heist story — the moment the plan goes wrong, the meeting of the protagonists, the hatching of the plot — it’s just one of the perversities of Jean-Pierre Melville’s “Le Cercle Rouge” (a name taken from a Buddhist quote, faked by the director) that he chooses to start his film miles away in time, space and mood, from the scene of the crime. But the odd, spartan pleasures of his off-kilter approach — two of the gang meet due to a stupendous, belief-defying coincidence; the third refuses his share of the profits; their policeman adversary pursues them relentlessly, yet we also twice see him come home, run a bath and talk to his cats — exert their own compelling power. Well, it’s either that or Alain Delon’s cheekbones. In any case, by increments, we come to root for the taciturn trio (quite aside from the bravura 25 minute-long no-dialogue heist sequence, there is astonishingly little chat from our antiheroes) right up until their inevitable comeuppance. That this happens not through the internal betrayals that usually cause movie crime gangs to unravel, but instead it is their loyalty to each other, is Melville’s coup de grace: by then our sympathies have so been twisted that we side entirely with these killers and thieves against a world that seems far more duplicitous and ignoble than they are. John Woo came close to directing a Steven Knight-penned remake, but it fell apart — probably for the best.