Minus a definite article, "Two Men in Town" is the literal translation of "Deux hommes dans la ville," a 1973 movie that was the final pairing of Jean Gabin (the great player of doomed roles from the 1930s) and Alain Delon (the great player of doomed roles from the 1960s and 70s). In a small part, as a swaggering young tough guy, it also featured Gérard Depardieu (billed tenth as "un jeune truand. "

The stars (Gabin and Delon) must be the title's two men, but (1) they are in more than one town and (2) the plot is moved by a third man or a third man plus a gang of four bank robbers that Delon's character had run before going to prison.

The movie, which was produced by Delon, written and directed by Jose Giovanni who had been on death row, is a somewhat heavy-handed critique of cost-cutting, non-rehabilitative trends in prison administration and of the death penalty (and judges unconcerned about sleeping jurors). It includes a modern (1970s) variant on Les Misérables, too, though Delon had already made a better one (Once a Thief) in Hollywood (directed by Ralph Nelson in 1965, Delon's incarnation of Jean Valjean had Van Heflin as an Inspector Javert in it).

Gabin looked (and probably was) weary. His character, Germain Cazeneuve, who provides extensive voice-over narration, is a prison educator nearing retirement and trying to aid one of his rehabilitation successes. Delon is more passionate than in many of his other roles, but eventually reduced to blankness. Delon was more sleek and chic than Gabin was even in the 1930s (for instance as Pépé le Moko). For a worker in a print shop, he had very elegantly tailored suits. He is crushed by Fate as much as Gabin was back in "Le bête humaine."

The policeman (Michel Bouquet as an Inspector Javert in a light-colored trench coat) who busted Gino (Delon) in Paris and sent him to prison for ten years pursues Gino to Montpelier harasses him, his employer, and his girlfriend. Pawing her sets Gino off, though he was teetering on the brink of violence (taking some of it out in smashing cars in a junkyard) before that. The movie presents Gino as trying very hard to go straight and keep himself out of returning to prison, even after a tragedy deprives him of his main support. Germain champions him and Germain's children treat him as a brother rather than a rival, but with the animosity of a Chief Inspector who can hold him for 48 hours on a whim (or worse...) and the suppressed rage of a convict who is continually humiliated on that score, renewed violence is no surprise (which then confirms the "once a criminal, always a criminal" belief of the Javerts of the police forces; this one goes to extraordinary lengths to make sure that his view of Gino is confirmed).

Malka Ribowska .plays an impassioned advocate, whose speech against the death penalty excites the audience in the courtroom, but has not the slightest effect on the judge (there must have been a French/guillotine equivalent for "hanging judge," but I don't know what the term was).

BTW, Giovanni (a pseudonym for Joseph Damiani), adapted his own novel into the screenplay for Jacques Becker's final film, the prison drama, "Le Trou" (1960). And Becker's "Touchez pas au grisbi" had revived Gabin's flagging career in 1954. The death penalty was eliminated in France in 1981.

The video transfer is soft with more than a few ghost images. Instead of information on the historical context and the director's intimate familiarity with the prison/justice system, there are trailers for the movie and ten other Alain Delon crime (melo)dramas. No one is going to confuse Kino with Criterion!

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I have also reviewed the first Delon/Gabin pairing, "Any Number Can Win" and expecting to get around to seeing them in "The Sicilian Clan." Delon also played an impetuous youth to Burt Lancaster playing an older man not ready to pack it in "The Leopard" and "Scorpio."

This is another contribution to Ifif1938's French finds marathon.

©2006, Stephen O. Murray




Recommended:
Yes

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