Un flic

Not to be mistaken for Jean-Pierre Melville's eponymous movie (1972).

This movie depicts the post-war years:war and occupation have bled the country white and if some people are ready to roll up their sleeves (the cop played by Lucien Coedel),some think that working's too hard and that there's money to be made with the black market (his brother-in -law played by Raymond Pellegrin.

The beginning of the movie is the best.It's actually a long flashback: the bad boy has been severely injured and lies on a hospital bed and his brother-in-law,the good guy remembers:the housewives standing in line to get some meat or some milk;his meager salary and his small apartment ;his wife's brother working first as a mechanic,then leaving it for the broader horizons of black market;his smart clothes and his easy life...

Unfortunately the rest of the movie is not in the same league.Forgetting the interesting backdrop ,the story is boiled down to a banal gangsters story,not France's forte.This brothers' story needed a Robert Siodmak,a Raoul Walsh or a Jules Dassin.

"Un Flic", directed by Maurice de Canonge, is an ordinary gangster movie with young Raymond Pellegrin and is almost forgettable except that in the end, the gangsters are trapped in a bourgeois house in the suburb of Paris and attacked by 300 policemen with all specific protections and armored cars. That was quite unique at that time and the local police prefect was very impressed as he never had that much forces. A true document.

It can also be seen as a crime flick from the late forties, just a few years after the end of WW2. It evokes those who more or less participated to the release of Paris. The first part explores this angle in a very interesting way. And it also shows how people behaved in those periods, twisted, disturbed times for French people. How to succeed in life, how to survive, make money. Raymond Pellegrin is already awesome here, two decades before his peak in the French crime film genre. He was really a gifted actor. This movie is a sort of semi documentary of the hoodlum way of life, and also police routine, shown in a rather light hearted way, sometimes funny. Solid action scenes too. A pretty worth watching feature. And I am not usually fond of the forties French films.