La métamorphose des cloportes

This movie is about trust, mistrust, truth, and lies.

It begins with a ragtag group of petty criminals planning, organizing, and then attempting to carry out a heist. We get the sense that their project is doomed from the start, a view held especially by their mastermind, Alphonse `The Fox' Marechal. Alphonse says his fellow thieves are birdbrains. However, he needs the money from the heist to support his lavish spending on wining and dining women.

We quickly see that Alphonse's mistrust of his team is not misplaced. His safecracking `expert' deceives him about the cost of their equipment and the value of the loot inside their target safe. The job ends up taking much longer than they budgeted, and results in their being found out by the police. Alphonse ends up being the only one caught, convicted and sentenced to prison time.

Five years pass until Alphonse is released from prison. It's payback time. He searches for the three birdbrains who double-crossed him, and for his share of their take.

This movie is overlong and would be ordinary if not for the presence of Lino Ventura. As Alphonse the Fox, Ventura is as charismatic and magnetic as any movie tough guy.

I never learned what or who is `cloportes' of the title. However, an odd scene during the title sequence at the beginning, showing cockroaches running across the camera lens, is neatly explained at the very end.

I reviewed this movie as part of a project at the Library of Congress. I've named the project FIFTY: 50 Notable Films Forgotten Within 50 Years. As best I can determine, this film, like the other forty-nine I've identified, has not been on video, telecast, or distributed in the U.S. since its original release. In my opinion, it is worthy of being made available again.

Audiard bought the rights to Boudard's Noir novel because he somewhat resented being looked down upon as a nice little colourful dialogue fiddler. Worse yet, a zinger peddler for the New Wave snobs. This attempt turned out to be a complete failure: it bombed at the box-office and fifty years after you can understand while following the clumsy effort. It would take another dozen years - and sadly the death of his son François - before Audiard understood how to rein in his buoyant one-liners and fine-tune sharp and dry words more in tune with dark and cold story lines.

The storyline here is not really interesting and the promising angle of trust and honour among thieves is simply drowned under funny lines and situations. The big failure of the movie is clearly that Audiard's lines are the most enjoyable part and they keep derailing the storyline from its natural darkness.

As many minor Audiard works this one could be best appreciated as a series of a dozen short scenes with wonderful actors, relieving you from the pain of sitting through the whole sluggish bug dance.

'Cloportes' or 'woodlice' to us Brits where I don't believe the film ever showed is a real curio. Has a super 60s 'nouvelle vague' look with splendid crisp black and white cinematography and lots of Parisian location shooting. It also has an equally cool score courtesy of Jimmy Smith but not everything sits so well here. Beginning with an almost farcical heist, this gets a bit lost and recovers as a light comedy before trying to become all meaningful. I found the mix, awkward and certainly at first difficult but now reflecting upon the film, I can't help but have some affection for it. This is partly, inevitably, because of another superb performances from Lino Ventura, ably assisted in the latter half by a strong showing by Irina Demick. Indeed the leading lady fits in beautifully with the moody b/w photography, more so than some of the others, like the appalling performance by Charles Aznavour. Can you overact without speaking? It seems so, badly miscast. But there are lovely flourishes including a most imaginative way of illustrating Ventura's spell in prison through excerpts from Movietone News clippings and a great fairground scene.

Grande film con due splendidi interpreti in grande spolvero, Lino Ventura e Charles Aznavour. Bel ritmo e intensa la regia che regala diversi momenti memorabili.

Great sixties french film noir, the opening shot is a stunner. the ensemble acting is really marvelous, the movie oscillate constantly between comedy and drama and that's good. Like many movies from the period should be rediscovered one day on DVD.