Recensioni di Metacritic

A wonderful treasure from the seemingly inexhaustible cornucopia of crackling French crime dramas.

The magic here is all in the telling: in the graceful, laconic direction of Jacques Becker.

Max is played by Jean Gabin, named "the actor of the century" in a French poll, in Jacques Becker's Touchez Pas au Grisbi, a 1954 French crime film that uncannily points the way toward Jean-Pierre Melville's great "Bob Le Flambeur" the following year.

Roughly translated, Touchez pas au Grisbi means ''don't touch the loot.'' But in literal terms, this film version of Albert Simonin's blockbuster really couldn't care less who ends up with the cash.

Jean Gabin wasn't yet 50 when he starred as a big-time, high-style gangster hoping to retire, but he still looks pretty wasted, and this pungent tale about aging and friendship, adapted from a best-selling noir thriller by Albert Simonin, would be hard to imagine without his puffy features.

Grisbi is hard (new subtitles bring out the chill of the gangsters' argot) and gray: a meditation on what we are left with when life has let us down, played out in the haunted eyes of Jean Gabin.

Jeanne Moreau turns in a neat bit as a moll and Dary as the inarticulate aging Romeo friend is memorable.

Often confusing, especially during the first half, but Gabin and Ventura are well cast as hoods.