![]() ![]() ![]() As the ’50s gave way to the ’60s, it was exactly this quality that Godard and Truffaut would later identify as hallmarks of an ancien regime of French film. His first directorial efforts date back to a couple of shorts in the 1930s, though it wasn’t until the 1950s that his films attained widespread acclaim, perhaps because their elegance and nostalgia aligned perfectly with the conservative postwar mood of France. Touchez pas au grisbi, perhaps more than any other of Becker’s works, serves as a meta-narrative about the director, a running commentary on the life and times of the man who made it.īorn in Paris on 15 September 1906, Becker’s ascension in the French film industry was gradual and deliberate, marked by stints as an assistant, as a beleaguered resident of Vichy France, a prisoner in a German POW camp, and eventually by the late 1940s as a fledgling director-in-chief. But the authorial hand behind what might’ve been a hoary cliché gives Touchez pas au grisbi a classic (and classicist) status it might not have enjoyed otherwise. As also enacted in films such as Carlito’s Way (Brian De Palma, 1993) and Belly (Hype Williams, 1998), the plot of the hardened outlaw committing his last caper is a trope of the crime genre. “You see the bags under our eyes? Do you think we’re a pretty sight?” Whether paying-off a restaurateur who may be implicated in his criminal exploits, putting up an accomplice on the run for a night in his secret apartment, or torturing a younger buck for information, his unhurried expression rarely changes. I want to retire,” he tells his right-hand man. Played by Jean Gabin, Max summarises his character’s frame-of-mind in no vague terms: “I was fed up with all our bullshit years ago. Touchez pas au grisbi is the story of a gangster’s compulsion to commit one more heist before retiring to a life of bubbly and well-proportioned broads. Becker’s 1954 film Touchez pas au grisbi (1954), often translated into English as “Don’t Touch the Loot”, therefore appears as a loaded artistic statement by an ageing don who died shortly before younger radicals would, in the eyes of many critics and historians, render him obsolete. So wide is the shadow cast on the country’s cinema by Truffaut, Godard and the ilk of Cahiers du Cinéma that even avowed masters of the medium like Jacques Becker, Agnès Varda and Louis Malle get blotted out retroactively by a culture industry which elevates the pyrotechnics of a À bout de souffle (1960) or a Jules et Jim (1962) over the staid intensity of a Le Trou (Becker, 1960) or a Cléo de 5 à 7 (Varda, 1962). NB: a bisexual character (Jean Servais),which was risqué for the time.In the light of the impending nouvelle vague, reflection on any aspect of post-WWII French film threatens to become a referendum. Fans of Jacques Becker will like it but a young person who wants to discover this great French director should pick up one of his four towering achievements:"Casque D'or" "Goupi Mains ROuges" "rendezvous De Juillet" and "Le Trou". "Rue De L'Estrapade" is a curious patchwork:it includes snatches of previous works :the chic world of fashion ("Falbalas" ) ,a little walk in the popular town ("Antoine Et Antoinette" ) Amorous Quarrel ("Edouard Et Caroline" ).If only he had borrowed from his three early major works ("Casque D'Or" ,"Rendez-Vous De Juillet" "Goupi Mains Rouges" ).It's pleasant enough with a nice appearance -at the 46th minute- by Daniel Gelin as a singer short of the readies performing Georges Brassens' lovely "Le Parapluie". After a masterpiece such as "Casque D'Or" ,one of the peaks of the French cinema,anything would be a let down.Becker did not even try.His "Rue DE L'Estrapade" ,with the exception of his debut ("Dernier Atout" ) was his weakest film then.He was to sink lower with "Arsene Lupin" and his dismal "Ali Baba" -Fernandel in the title role!- before coming up with aces for his final -and perhaps most ambitious- chef d'oeuvre "Le Trou" ,maybe the best prison movie ever done. "Estrapade" (Estrapado) was a horrible torture which I'm not going to depict here.The word sounds like "escapade" which means " gentle runaway".And "Rue De L'Escapade " was tailor made for such a movie,for the wife (A beaming Anne Vernon) ,tired of her husband's (handsome Louis Jourdan) infidelities ,runs away from marital home and rents a seedy tiny apartment in the working-class area of the city.
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