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Jacques Becker’s Touchez pas au grisbi
BY STEVE VINEBERG
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Touchez pas au grisbi (1954)
Directed by Jacques Becker. Screenplay by Becker, Maurice Griffe, and Albert Simonin, based on the novel by Simonin. With Jean Gabin, René Dary, Paul Frankeur, Lino Ventura, Michael Jourdan, Jeanne Moreau, and Dora Doll. In French with English subtitles (black and white/94 minutes). At the Brattle Theatre Friday through Sunday.
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Touchez pas au grisbi is the latest in the series of revelatory French gangster pictures, mostly from the pre–Nouvelle Vague period, that are being released in this country in sparkling new prints; it follows Bob le flambeur, Rififi, and Le cercle rouge. This one, made in 1954 from an Albert Simonin novel of the previous year, is unusual in that the spare, poetic style (here supplied by the director, Jacques Becker, and the cinematographer, Pierre Montazel), the mournful mood, and the overall existential feel — all distinctive elements of the French post-war policiers and gangster noirs — are tied to the age and the circumstances of the protagonist. Max is an aging crook whose plans to retire on the strength of his final score, the theft of eight bars of gold bullion from Orly Airport, are threatened when his partner in crime, Riton (René Dary), lets his showgirl mistress in on the secret. She’s already moving on to her next boyfriend, an up-and-coming hood named Angelo (Lino Ventura), who sees an opportunity to separate this pair of old-school buddies from their grisbi (loot). Max is played by Jean Gabin, the great laconic romantic star of the 1930s, France’s closest equivalent to Bogart, and his presence provides the movie with the core of feeling it needs. Gabin is the most economical of actors: he conveys the depth of his response to a shift in fortune with a shrug of his shoulders, the acknowledgment of a broken dream with the sagging of his tired eyelids, loyalty and love for his partner with the unstressed tension between a sad smile and the weary set of his watchful basset-hound face. If there’s such a thing as proletarian grandeur, Gabin’s got it. There’s a special joy in watching him two decades after he hit the peak of his career (in movies like Julien Duvivier’s Pépé le Moko, Jean Renoir’s La grande illusion, and Marcel Carné’s Le jour se lève), performing with tossed-off skill. His scenes with Dary — who has a pliant, hopeful face as the foolish, affectionate Riton, a man who hasn’t yet gotten around to thinking of himself as past his prime — are the emotional highlights of the movie. You may not recognize her at first, but a very young Jeanne Moreau makes a startling impression as Josy, the club dancer with the coke habit who casually betrays the man who adores her. And Daniel Cauchy, who has a few sharp scenes as one of Angelo’s henchmen, was a year away from playing the fervent, callow young protégé of the title character in Jean-Pierre Melville’s Bob le flambeur. It’s a very effective cast, especially the older performers. Paul Frankeur plays Pierrot, who owns the club where a number of key scenes take place. When Angelo kidnaps Riton and offers to return him to Max in exchange for the grisbi, Max pulls Pierrot out of retirement to suit up and help him bring the gold to the meeting, in case anything goes wrong. Marinette, Pierrot’s anxious but philosophical wife, is played by Gaby Basset, who was once married to Gabin, and Paul Oettly is Max’s wily, pragmatic uncle Oscar, whom he’s trusting to fence the gold. It’s appropriate that Gabin should give one of the best performances of his middle age under Jacques Becker’s direction, since they shared a mentor — Jean Renoir, who directed Gabin in Les bas-fonds and La bête humaine as well as La grande illusion. Becker was trained by Renoir, whose influence is clear on Becker’s best-known film, the turn-of-the-century drama Casque d’or, which stars Simone Signoret. But even in a movie like Touchez pas au grisbi, working in a genre that never interested Renoir, you can see how much Becker learned from him about working with actors. Becker, who died in his 50s while his final film, Le trou (1960), was in the editing stages, is a forgotten director. Perhaps the reissue of this movie will help to restore his reputation.
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