What made Grisbi different was that it was a French film throughout. However, previous French crime films had simply been imitations of their American counterparts. It doesn’t sound nearly as enthralling as it plays out on the screen.Īmerican crime films were popular in France, and Touchez Pas Au Grisbi was not the first time that the French motion picture industry attempted a home-grown noir. Instead, the focus is placed on quiet moments between middle-aged criminals, such as planning tactics while sipping expensive Champagne and eating pâté or on the evening ritual of putting on silk pajamas and getting ready for bed. The film withholds the actual gold heist and the potential drama involved from the audience’s view. It is really the quiet, almost lethargic atmosphere that sets Grisbi apart from other noir crime movies. There is “loot” involved, of course, as well as the requisite violence expected in a crime film, but the film is more about quiet moments and the loyalties between old friends. Touchez Pas Au Grisbi roughly translates to Don’t Touch the Loot, which seems a rather silly title for a story that is actually a rather sober, quiet, and serious drama. When Angelo kidnaps Riton as leverage to get his hands on the gold, Max must decide between his loyalty to his best friend and a comfortable retirement. Unfortunately, eternal screw-up Riton lets the secret slip to Josy (Jeanne Moreau), his flighty, gold-digging “girlfriend.” She, in turn, passes the secret along to a younger, rival mobster, Angelo (Lino Ventura), who she is seeing on the side. To finance that goal, Max and his old pal Riton (René Dary) have secretly pulled off a robbery of eight gold ingots. Rather than staying out drinking and carousing, Max just wants to go to bed and ultimately, he longs to retire. Lucky for noir aficionados, around the time Hollywood noir was winding down, French noir came into bloom, due in large part to the popularity of Jacques Becker’s film Touchez Pas Au Grisbi (1954).īecker’s film stars the great Jean Gabin as Max, a world-weary, middle-aged gangster who is fed up with the mob lifestyle. However, during the latter half of the 1950s, the production of dark crime films slowed considerably, and most critics consider this the end of the classic film noir period. In the decade following World War II, a dark, cynical mood crept into Hollywood cinema which expressed itself in fatalistic crime films and pessimistic melodramas that would later come to be labeled “film noir.” Dark classics such as Double Indemnity (1944), Detour (1945), The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946), Out of the Past (1947), In a Lonely Place (1950), and the Asphalt Jungle (1950) appeared alongside dozens of lesser-known, but often just as entertaining, entries.
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