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‘Hands off the Loot!’ Jacques Becker’s crackling Paris crime tale is a time machine to an age of Parisian tough guys in double breasted suits, who never show their cards, and mistreat women in ways the Hollywood production code would never allow. Old thief Jean Gabin’s ill-gotten wealth is threatened by the newcomer creep Lino Ventura, thanks to the treachery of a very young Jeanne Moreau; the struggle revives weapons and tactics not used since the Occupation. One of the Great Euro crime classics is now looking terrific in Kino/Studio Canal’s restoration.

Touchez pas au grisbi

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1954 / B&w / 1:37 flat Academy / 96 min. / Honor among Thieves / Street Date August 13, 2019 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Jean Gabin, René Dary, Paul Frankeur, Lino Ventura, Jeanne Moreau, Dora Doll, Daniel Cauchy, Michel Jourdan, Marilyn Buferd, Denise Clair, Gaby Basset, Delia Scala.

Cinematography: Pierre Montazel

Film Editor:...

Olivier Assayas's engrossing movie traces the life of one of the 20th century's most notorious terrorists

Conventional wisdom suggests that we look to America for the essential models of the crime movie, but in fact, in addition to providing a name for that most respected of Hollywood genres, the film noir, the French were way out front when, early in the last century, Louis Feuillade directed a succession of sophisticated, surreal serials of underworld activities that remain unsurpassed, among them Judex, Fantômas, Les vampires and Tih Minh.

This tradition was carried on in Marcel Carné's classics of the 1930s and after the second world war by Jacques Becker with Touchez pas au grisbi (based on a Série noire novel by Albert Simonin that was accompanied by a 14-page glossary of underworld argot) and Jean-Pierre Melville, who specialised in gangster movies of a purity unrivalled by Hollywood.

Numerous petits-maîtres...