Where to begin? How about with Criterion? Criterion has again taken a great movie that is little known in the US, restored the images, cleansed the soundtrack of any hisses, and issued the movie on DVD with interesting and informative extras.

Is the 1954 French gangster movie "Touchez pas au grisbi" (Don't Touch the Loot) worthy of such efforts? Without question. Jacques Becker was the link between Jean Renoir (whose 1930s masterpieces Becker worked on as an assistant director and played small parts in) and the New Wave, and "Touchez pas au grisbi" is even more directly the link between the cinema noir of the 1930s (with Jean Gabin starring in movies directed by Renoir, Marcel Carne, and Julien Duvivier) and the "godfather" of the New Wave, Jean-Pierre Melville, "Bob, la flambeur," "Le cercle rouge," and "Un flic," in particular.*

The cinematic style of "Touchez pas au grisbi" is not flashy in the New Wave style. There are not jump-cuts, but there is a lot of cutting. Shots from above are used sparingly, but all the more effectively. And "the City of Light" has rarely looked so dark... and when the movie leaves the city, the countryside is very, very dark (so that headlights are blinding, and not just to the characters).

Plot spoiler alert

Becker did not show what most gangster movies show. The grisbi (loot) of the title is a hundred kilograms of gold bars, though its existence is not revealed to about a third of a way into the movie. It is the result of the biggest heist in French history, but the heist is not shown. No details of how it was done are mentioned by anyone.

Though the big final job was probably already a cliché then, and certainly is now, "Touchez pas au grisbi" is not about the preparations for and executions of that seductive last big score. The dapper criminal, Max (Jean Gabin) wanted to obey the injunction of the title. His considerably dimmer and vainer sidekick, Riton (René Dary), desperate to hold on to the cynical young nightclub dancer Josy (a 25-year-old Jeanne Moreau whom I recognized by her voice rather than her face), assures her that he is going to be in the big money.

She tells the neighborhood heroin boss Angelo Fraiser (Lino Ventura in his first screen role; he was later the hero of Melville's "L' Armée des ombres") that Max has the gold. Angelo goes after it, Riton stupidly falls into his hands, and the stage is set for a trade (that Riton urges Max not to make to save Riton's life) and the movie's fireworks (with some surprises for everyone including the viewer).

End plot spoiler alert

Becker set up complex relationships among a large set of characters. He telegraphed nothing, so that the viewer (at least this one) puts together pieces observed earlier that he or she (or I) did not know were important. The gentleness with which Max tells Riton that he must give up Josy (even to Angelo) is remarkable for the gruff bear that is Max. Max pours Riton good vintage wine, gives him a slab of paté, pajamas, a tooth brush, and the bed of his secret hideout apartment. (Riton declines the last and lies awake on the couch...)

In a very interesting 9-minute 1972 interview, Lino Ventura explains that when the movie was being made, no one outside those involved expected much from it. The distributors did not want a movie with Jean Gabin, who they regarded as a has-been after a string of post-WWII flops. Ventura himself had been a Greco-Roman boxing champion and promoter who had never been in a movie. Jeanne Moreau had played small parts in seven earlier movies, but "Grisbi" is the first one in which she made much of an impression (Louis Malle made her a star four years later as the lead in "Ascenseur pour l'échafaud"). In a 7-minute 2002 interview, Daniel Cauchy (who played Angelo's gunsel) recounts how Becker cast him (he was a commercial illustrator who looked like a hood). "Touchez pas au grisbi" was crucial to their careers.

The whole cast (Paul Frankeur's nightclub owner, Pierrot, also deserves to be singled out) was excellent. There is an eye-popping dress worn by Max's up-scale mistress (who still has her jewels on after the deed is done). And the jazzy music score by Jean Wiener is very effective. The theme apparently was a pop hit in France in 1954. The DVD includes a too-brief segment (2 minutes?) of Wiener in 1978 talking about, but not, alas, about the music for the movie.

The Criterion DVD does not have a commentary track. There were a few junctures at which I thought one would be useful. But then I remembered that it probably would have been done by Peter Cowie. No commentary track is preferable to having to listen to Cowie, though I'll readily acknowledge that those by him do contain information, sometimes even about what is on the screen...

A 4-minute-long (subtitled French) trailer is included. It gives away more plot information than I do even within the section set of as "plot spoiling" above, so should not be viewed before watching the movie itself. Although it is less important, the very interesting bonus interviews and an uninformative 5-minute excerpt (about 5 minutes) from the television series "Cinéastes de notre temps" (mostly clips, which are interesting in that they show by comparison just how marvelous the Criterion restoration of the movie is!).

The Criterion release of "Casque d'or" had interviews with both the main stars of that movie, plus more informative material from the "Cinéastes de notre temps" piece on Becker, and the (annoying but not uninformative) commentary track. Both discs have insert essaye by Philip Kemp . "Grisbi "also has one by Geoffrey O'Brien. I am grateful to Criterion for the extras, but, most of all, for providing the opportunity to see these two legendary movies!

---

In reviewing Casque d'Or, the first Becker film I'd ever seen, I discuss at some length the immediate predecessors of the French New Wave that its theorists-turned-directors venerated, including Becker, whom Godard remembered as an older brother, and as the most French of French masters of mise-en-scene.

I have also written about two of the great (later) Melville crime movies with weary professionals: Le Cercle Roug and Un flic. I've never had much enthusiasm for "Bob, le flambeur," but adore "Le Samourai." And a later once-honored, now largely forgotten heist film that has many resonances to Jean Gabin's turn is Max is Any Number Can Win, in which the young confederate (Alain Delon, who is also the star of three of the Melville movies mentioned in this paragraph) is more important than the young one in "Grisbi."


Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD