Une balle dans le canon

Pierre Varneck and Roger Hanin own a money-losing night club. In walks Don Ziegler, who wants his money - he had given it to them to smuggle out of Indo-China. They try to sell the club back, but the real owner has a proposition: take part in a robbery from a gold smuggler, and they'll split the loot.

Michel Deville's first feature is a taut crime drama, full of double-crosses, pretty girls, flashy cars and an air of desperation that never lets up for the two leads. With a lively jazz score by Raymond Bernard, some nice camerawork by Claude Lecomte, the seventy minutes that this movie takes flashes by. Hazel Scott shows up as a piano-playing chanteuse and La Bardot's sister Mijanou is the golf-playing girlfriend of Haneck, named 'Brigitte'... and the daughter of the man they rob. Even the author of the policier this is based on, Albert Simonin has a short role.

Yes Mijanou Bardot is BB's younger sister .No,she does not resemble that much her famous sibling.And she has only four lines (maybe five) to say.Her part is however important in the plot since her papa carries millions in his car as if they were cabbages for the market.And Mijanou's boyfriend (Pierre Vaneck)and his pal (Roger Hanin) attack the car to latch on to the dough;but do not panic,they use chloroform,in the good old-fashioned way.How naive and mindless these guys are:they do not even wear any masks or hoods! That was Michel Deville 's first film , who teamed up with Charles Gérard ,an actor who directed low budget films noirs like this one.The latter sank into oblivion,but the former made critically-acclaimed works afterward.