Touchez pas au grisbi

In his pre-war career, Jean Gabin was the greatest French actor of his generation, the living incarnation of a youthful but not immature ardor, a tough and no-nonsense approach to life, a hardened tenacity à la French, all combined with a "Lady Killer" face. With directors such as Duvivier and Carné, he became the figurehead of the poetic realism genre, perhaps French cinema's finest hour, from 1935 to 1939.

But war broke up and Gabin took part to the war effort along the Allies (the right side). When he was back, his hair became grayer, and he looked much older than his actual age. And then started a long slump in his career where he lost his way in forgettable dramas and tear-jerkers. Meanwhile, audiences were thrilled by Jean Marais and laughing with Fernandel. It took Jacques Becker to finally understand the new appeal of Gabin and by adapting Antoine Simonin's level, started his second career as the aging leader (after the romantic antihero and before the white-haired patriarch). The film was "Touchez pas au Grisbi" (Don't Touch the Loot).

And Max is the perfect alter-ego to Gabin, an world-weary hoodlum who just committed his greatest crime before retirement, stealing eight golden ingots from Orly with his friend and partner Riton (René Dary); That Gabin is still a Ladies' Man, attracting voluptuous burlesque dancers and sexy secretaries, tough enough to distribute a few slaps here and principled enough not to abandon his friend. Still, the film doesn't overplay these traits. Max is blasé about his sex-appeal, not quite obsessed with women, only his job and his friends matter.

The film features a long sequence when we seem him opening a bottle, pouring a good wine to him and Riton, cracking a toast, smearing the pâté as meticulously as if they were cracking a safe. And then we see him putting on his pajamas and brushing his teeth. It's not meant to make him look ordinary but to insist that he doesn't let himself distracted by girls, unlike Riton, his total opposite. Riton blabbed to his girlfriend Josy (Jeanne Moreau) about the heist, an information she gave to her new boyfriend Angelo (Lino Ventura), and last time I saw such an epic slap, it was between Steve McQueen and Ali McGraw in "The Getaway". Anyway, Riton is the square one, the softie, not even able to see when he's lured into a trap and in a way, there's something of the slipping Gabin in that Riton, his streak of failing melodramas might have killed his career if Becker didn't find him a tailor-made role.

But Becker did more than putting Gabin's career in the right track, he started a new one and not the least. Lino Ventura was a wrestling matches organizer when he was offered the role of the heavy Angelo. He never pictured himself as an actor and turned down the offer first. He hadn't made up his mind when he came to meet Jean Gabin in the set, it took Becker's son to take him to Gabin's dressing room. When the two men met, Gabin said "How are you?" Ventura said "fine" and Gabin concluded with "well, see you later". That was it. That's all it took for Ventura to accept the role that would instantly put him in the bandwagon of male icon, Gabin's straightforward humility was the perfect trigger to Ventura's motivation. He understood that he was dealing with pros and no-nonsense guys, not stars.

Like Gabin, Ventura never faked, he was a natural, and that showed on the screen. The two men were often rival in the movies but good friends in real life, sharing their passion for good restaurants and values such as friendship and family. So before its own making "Touchez pas au Grisbi" was already blessed by the charisma of two actors and the predestination classic. At a time filled with colorful costume dramas and big-budgeted swashbucklers to counter-attack the rise of TV, Becker opted for a minimalist subject but with a great casting. The format of "Grisbi" is linear and simple, the plot is so accessible that it's secondary, the real thrills is to rediscover Gabin inhabiting a new and see him with deal with people who are as smart and professional as he is.

Angelo is actually a perfect foil for Max while the good friend Riton Is so inept Max contemplated the idea of abandoning him. But Gabin could play greedy thugs but not without honor, and no one would have imagined him being something else. Same with Ventura. And "Grisbi" would open the way to noir classics as "Razzia" "Rififi" or Melville's "Bob le Flambeur", featuring stories mostly set at night when honest people are sleeping, movies centering on men with values and guts, and women whose main purpose is to drive the plot and not in the right direction as the catalysts of men's weaknesses. The female ally was often an aging woman herself, but these movies never held youth in high esteem, we didn't see many kids, young criminals were the most gullible and young women not trustworthy.,

These movies reminded me of that Godfather quote "women and children can be careless, but not men" and perhaps in this line lies the big shift between the old school popular cinema of the 50s 60s and the New Wave that featured many movie centering on youth and women: "400 Blows", "Jules and Jim" with Brigitte Bardot as the new sensation. Belmondo and Delon would later co-star with Gabin and Ventura and then portray in solo, cops or gangsters, like the old men, to prove that macho heroes could still surf the New Wave, and over it.

So, behind his minimalist but efficient approach to the crime genre, "Touchez pas au Grisbi" is a triple milestone in French cinema: restoring Jean Gabin's career, starting Lino Ventura's one and bringing a second breath to French noir cinema.