O Rei dos Falsários

Le Cave se rebiffe is one of my favorite movies of all times. With an impeccable cast (Jean Gabin, Bernard Blier and Maurice Biraud among others)and an excellent story to go along things can't go anything but right. Add to that the dialogs from Michel Audiard and voilà! a masterpiece.

This movie contains two of my favorite Audiard one liners, I'll try and translate for non French-speaking members: - About Eric, Jean Gabin says: "If stupidity could be measured, he'd serve as a yardstick for it" - Talking with Maurice Biraud: "To deny your own talents makes it easier for mediocre people to succeed".

Real funny stuff, but also things to think about.

Made by Gilles Grangier, a minor director whose films were not that bad ,"Le Cave Se Rebiffe" was a bit tongue in chick ,not to be taken seriously.Maurice Biraud was a touching character,lost in a world of crooks,counterfeiters and traitors.

Michel Audiard -who finally began to direct his own movies in the late sixties:"Faut Pas Prendre Les Enfants Du Bon Dieu Pour Des Canards Sauvages" starring Françoise Rosay ,etc-came up with some of his best lines .

My favorite line:Gabin comes to see Rosay and asks her for some "paper" for his job (forger).But the merchandise does not satisfy him and he answers: You can use them as paper cones of chips!(=bags of chips) Not much food for thought but very funny and entertaining.

Yet another vision of these counterfeiters of Paris. But the film does have its moments.

The dialogue is one thing, penned here by Michel Audiard, but with Jean Gabin doing his late-career thing: his performance is so predictable it's almost embarrassing. If we strip away Jean Gabin's tics and schematisms, the rest of the cast is superb and more subtle, and well served by Gilles Grangier's dialogue and direction.

One of the pleasures of the film is to see each of the parties make the other believe in an ensemble that is a festival of liars. Jean Gabin, the cellar-dweller, Bernard Blier and his clan, the operating principle of the plot is the lies they all practice.

What's disturbing here is the misogyny and phallocracy, which seems anachronistic today, but which dates the film furiously, very ridiculous in view of the society of the 2020s, to which we can add alcohol and cigarettes, present at all times, as well as racism (Jean Gabin's reaction to savage music). Women are tools, at the stove or sex objects.

'Touchez-pas au Grisbi' was the first in the Max le Menteur trilogy of Albert Simonin. The film under review is the second and 'Les Tontons Flingueurs' the third. All three adaptations have dialogue by the great Michel Audiard. This is the eighth collaboration of director Gilles Grangier with the irrepressible Jean Gabin whose career had been revitalised by 'Grisbi' in 1956. He has here one of his best roles of the 1960's as a master counterfeiter.There is tremendous support from Bernard Blier, Frank Villard, Balpetre, Martine Carol, Ginette Leclerc and the imperious Francoise Rosay. It is Gabin who is gifted the best lines notably 'the greatest failed businesses are built on trust'! Extremely entertaining with never a dull moment. Comedy is a serious business of course but I would like to think that the cast had as much fun in making this film as I had in watching it.

Very good ganster comedy by Gilles Grangier, the craftsman of French cinema, certainly one of his best films. Disregarded by the authors of the new wave, the one who made "daddy's cinema" deserves better than his reputation. The story and the staging are certainly classic, and a bit dated by the time the movie was made in 1960, but we spend a very good time in the company of these magnificent crooks interpreted by Jean Gabin and Bernard Blier. These two actors have no equal when it comes to interpreting Audiard's superb dialogues that you absolutely must appreciate in the original version. And the views of Paris are just superb...