Sotto il tallone

One of Pierre-Granier Deferre's first efforts,"la métamorphose des cloportes" boasts a good cast:Charles Aznavour,Lino Ventura,Pierre Brasseur and in a small part,Françoise Rosay as Gertrude who provides the men with the "tools" they need for their "job' (break-ins ).It's not a film noir,by a long shot,but an unpretentious harmless little comedy which sometimes works -Ventura in jail watching the 1960/61/62/63/64 news-and sometimes does not -Aznavour disguised as a guru:he was ahead of the 1967 summer of love craze though-.

The great pre-nouvelle vague directors (Duvivier,Cayatte,Autant-Lara et al) were no longer forces to be reckoned with and their successors -non new wave young directors that is- such as Granier-Deferre and De La Patellière - were not up to scratch.

Two Granier-Deferre's movies which deserve to be watched: "le chat" (1970) thanks to the fabulous Jean Gabin/Simone Signoret team,and "une étrange affaire" (1981) .

Audiard bought the rights to Boudard's Noir novel because he somewhat resented being looked down upon as a nice little colourful dialogue fiddler. Worse yet, a zinger peddler for the New Wave snobs. This attempt turned out to be a complete failure: it bombed at the box-office and fifty years after you can understand while following the clumsy effort. It would take another dozen years - and sadly the death of his son François - before Audiard understood how to rein in his buoyant one-liners and fine-tune sharp and dry words more in tune with dark and cold story lines.

The storyline here is not really interesting and the promising angle of trust and honour among thieves is simply drowned under funny lines and situations. The big failure of the movie is clearly that Audiard's lines are the most enjoyable part and they keep derailing the storyline from its natural darkness.

As many minor Audiard works this one could be best appreciated as a series of a dozen short scenes with wonderful actors, relieving you from the pain of sitting through the whole sluggish bug dance.

This movie is about trust, mistrust, truth, and lies.

It begins with a ragtag group of petty criminals planning, organizing, and then attempting to carry out a heist. We get the sense that their project is doomed from the start, a view held especially by their mastermind, Alphonse `The Fox' Marechal. Alphonse says his fellow thieves are birdbrains. However, he needs the money from the heist to support his lavish spending on wining and dining women.

We quickly see that Alphonse's mistrust of his team is not misplaced. His safecracking `expert' deceives him about the cost of their equipment and the value of the loot inside their target safe. The job ends up taking much longer than they budgeted, and results in their being found out by the police. Alphonse ends up being the only one caught, convicted and sentenced to prison time.

Five years pass until Alphonse is released from prison. It's payback time. He searches for the three birdbrains who double-crossed him, and for his share of their take.

This movie is overlong and would be ordinary if not for the presence of Lino Ventura. As Alphonse the Fox, Ventura is as charismatic and magnetic as any movie tough guy.

I never learned what or who is `cloportes' of the title. However, an odd scene during the title sequence at the beginning, showing cockroaches running across the camera lens, is neatly explained at the very end.

I reviewed this movie as part of a project at the Library of Congress. I've named the project FIFTY: 50 Notable Films Forgotten Within 50 Years. As best I can determine, this film, like the other forty-nine I've identified, has not been on video, telecast, or distributed in the U.S. since its original release. In my opinion, it is worthy of being made available again.

Great sixties french film noir, the opening shot is a stunner. the ensemble acting is really marvelous, the movie oscillate constantly between comedy and drama and that's good. Like many movies from the period should be rediscovered one day on DVD.

Grande film con due splendidi interpreti in grande spolvero, Lino Ventura e Charles Aznavour. Bel ritmo e intensa la regia che regala diversi momenti memorabili.