Le Temps des loups

This is aSergio Gobbi's product, as director, more or less the same DNA as LA PART DES LIONS, made one year later and produced by the latest and directed by Jean Larriaga, in which Robert Hossein and Charles Aznavour also played childhood friends. In LA PART, you also have Robert Hossein, Charles Aznavour and Albert Minski as a goon gangster role, not very talkative...This was the low scale crime flick of the seventies, the early seventies. This is fast paced, brutal, a bit run of the mill but powerful enough to grab you. Do not expect realism nor any comparison with Jean Pierre Melville' s cinema, or Robert Enrico, or Henri Verneuil, or Jose Giovanni. It is the level just below, but it's worth seeing for any French crime film buff. And I definitely am.

Everyone seems to list this film as being 1979, but I saw it on Japan TV in 1976. Great plot has Hossein as a professional thief who is childhood friends (now rival) cop Aznavour who is hot on his trail. Hossein calls himself "dillinger" for he looks up to the old US bank robber. FRENCH CONNECTION's Bouzzuffi plays one of Hossein's henchman. Excellent car chase and stunt centers in a French version of a Italian action cinema route. The video print is a murkey TV print and has commerical edits, and is 20 minutes short and the character plot runs rough. Shown uncut on Showtime and Escapade cable channel back in 1981. I wish I had a VCR then. ): Recommended, but not the video print.

As far as French film noir is concerned ,Sergio Gobbi represents the nadir .All his movies are simplistic and derivative ,and when he has got a good idea ,he is not able to exploit it successfully: making the cop and the gangster school friends was certainly interesting ,but when it consists of sepia old movies introduced in the present, it does not amount to anything;and however ,both studied in an independent Roman Catholic school!!The cop (Aznavour) has a talk with the venerable priest principal; The gangster(Hossein) ,fascinated by the American names,calls himself "Dillinger" and when he meets the blond Virna Lisi -whose part is inept- ,it looks like a poor man's "Bonnie And Clyde"

Music by Aznavour/Gavarentz;a song was even written and was on the radio (the title of the film) but is not heard in the movie.

The movie was released late 1969;the IMDb information is not quite accurate .