Les Tueurs de San Francisco

Gosh Delon was so handsome. I wish I liked his movies better.

"Once a Thief" from 1965 was another disappointment, despite a good cast. It's a crime flick starring Delon, Ann-Margret, Jack Palance, Van Heflin, and John Davis Chandler.

Heflin is a cop dying to get something on former criminal Delon, who intends to go straight. But Heflin's harassment loses him his job, and he can't get another to support his wife (Ann-Margret) and daughter. So he agrees to go in with his brother (Palance) and his brother's scary friend (Chandler) and commit a crime that will give him a big payday.

Depressing with an uneven script, though the performances were good. Hard to picture Delon and Palance as brothers, though. Maybe they had different mothers.

Ann-Margret did not have much to do except look sexy serving cocktails, cry, and scream.

Delon was a huge star everywhere but in the U. S. He was effective in many films. But he never had an American affect or was the right kind of leading man for U. S. audiences, any more than Jean Gabin was.

Had he appeared in a widely distributed film directed with a foreign sensibility he might have done better. Directors like Anton Corbijn, M. Night Shyalaman, Wes Anderson would have been better for him. Alas that ship sailed as he is now retired and overseeing the production of all the products that bear his name.

A downer. Not great, not awful.