One of the greatest gangster films ever made — in France, or anywhere. The Frenchman most associated with the genre is of course Jean-Pierre Melville, whose earliest effort in that vein, Bob le Flambeur, followed a year after this Jacques Becker trailblazer, and while there is a strong family resemblance between the two, Melville's subsequent efforts grow increasingly distant and distinct: more closely patterned after their American antecedents, more aestheticized, more geometrized, more mechanized. Where Melville is attracted to archetypes (or, as you prefer, stereotypes), Becker is attracted to humans. Where Melville is cold, Becker is warm. This is not to suggest that Becker is inoculated against the classical conventions of the genre: the aging hood, the Last Big Score, the honor and dishonor among thieves, the chesslike moves and countermoves, and the violent climax on a lonely country road with tommy guns and hand grenades. Neither is it to suggest he is not prone to romanticize his subject. But it is a blue-blooded romanticism which celebrates the human animal, the individual, the sentiments, the heart. Jean Gabin, René Dary, Paul Frankeur, Jeanne Moreau, Lino Ventura. (1960) — Duncan Shepherd
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