Un flic

For a police thriller, this movie chose the strange angles of architecture and fashion from which to tell the story. Throughout, the film actively tries to showcase a new, modern France. In the weird opening sequence, we see a sea-side resort with an endless row of brand-new apartment blocks, totally void of human presence in a foul winter-weather. Strangely, from afar, a shop in one of the buildings seem open. Because of the abundant lighting, we might be tempted to think it's a bar, but it's a bank (about to be robbed). The police headquarters is another modern building given lots of camera-attention by Melville, who seems to juxtapose this 'new' France to the old; the contrasts with scenes of the 'old Paris' such as the closing scenes at the Arc de Triomphe are great.

The male characters seem to spend an inordinate amount of time to groom their looks. Both Alain Delon and the excellent bad guy Richard Crenna (Simon) are given lengthy shots showing them combing their hair. They parade around in flawless suits, slick ties, lush bathrobes, gold cuff links. These are sharp dressed men, vain and self-obsessed, misogynist and gay-bashing. The gorgeous can-can girls are there (like in so many other Melville movies) but no-one seems to notice them. Delon manipulates a beautiful transvestite into thinking he might fall for her charms, only to beat her up when she fails to deliver on a promise.

Catherine Deneuve on the other hand seems less well served, sartorially speaking; I was not very impressed with her acting performance in this film, but perhaps my judgment is influenced by the ugly earrings she wears throughout. The closing titles highlight that the black dress worn by 'Mademoiselle Deneuve' was by Yves Saint Laurent. I don't know why this was pointed out, since the dress is hideous. Deneuve's finest moment was when she plays an angel of death, wearing a haute couture caricature of the nurse uniform. Quentin Tarantino must have been directly inspired by this to create Daryl Hannah's nurse look when she is set to murder Uma Thurman at the start of Kill Bill vol 1.

All in all, the plot was not that interesting, but since the male actors were all in terrific form it was a very pleasurable movie to watch.

Can a soufflé still taste good, even a trifle underbaked and missing an ingredient or two? The answer depends on the cook.

Late one rainy afternoon, four men rob a bank in the French coastal town of St.-Jean-de-Monts, not without deadly complications. The lead crook, Simon (Richard Crenna), leads a double life as the owner of a French nightclub. One of his regulars is a quiet police inspector named Coleman (Alain Delon). In time, their lines of work will shake their friendship like nothing else, not even Coleman's affair with Simon's wife, Cathy (Catherine Deneuve).

"Un flic" (A Cop), also known as "Dirty Money," is a film about the dehumanizing nature of police work. Coleman is suave but conflicted, willing to slap around a suspect or even a suspected suspect but not so hardened as not to be conflicted about that.

"This job makes us skeptical," his deputy Morand (Paul Crauchet) notes as the pair leave a morgue.

"Especially about skepticism," Coleman replies.

Director Jean-Pierre Melville was a leading light of the New Wave movement, and his commitment to impressionistic pure cinema is on strong display right at the outset. We open on the sound of crashing waves, filling the screen with blue. The car with Simon and the other robbers moves slowly into position. With rain crashing around them on an empty street, three of the four men wordlessly get out in turn to take their positions in the bank.

A short but portentous scene is played out through their eyes. Simon's are committed but apprehensive. The old pro who joins him first, Marc Albouis (André Pousse), reads cool and empty. In the car, a former bank manager named Paul (Ricardo Cucciolla) hesitates while the driver, Louis (Michael Conrad) looks at him hard. You can see the fear in Paul's eyes as he reluctantly leaves the vehicle to play his part.

What is up with this scene? It features four French robbers, only one of whom is actually played by a Frenchman. Here, and in many other ways, Melville was clearly doing things his way, establishing meticulous realism in some scenes only to abandon it in others, most notably in a later train heist which features some fine suspense work but was clearly filmed with models.

The weakest element for me in this movie is not the Tyco episode itself, but how it is integrated into the rest of the film. We have little idea how the train heist is being done, or why it leads to the final act the way it does. Yet its aftermath proves central to everything, by which time Melville is giving us not riddles but koans.

Though employing real locations and real-time sequences, Melville doesn't seem nearly as interested in telling a solid crime story, with motives and meanings laid out. His film, like the dialogue sprinkled through it, remains elliptical all the way through.

"We're doomed victims, the prey of actual pros," is something a blackmailed homosexual tells Coleman, which serves as a kind of motif for the film. I don't think "Un flic" sells the idea as well as it thinks. If Coleman is a victim, it's of his own hard code.

But "Un flic" keeps you watching and makes you think. And while casting an American as the lead crook and another as his key partner seems a strange conceit, dubbed as they necessarily are, both Crenna and Conrad make it work, playing their parts with the same elegant drabness that underscores every scene. Crenna's Simon is one character you come to care about, if only a little. Delon may be a trifle too mopey, but makes for an enigmatic center.

As a crime story, it's pretty decent. As a cinematic tone poem, it's much better.

Neglected Melville crime thriller isn't exactly good, but isn't bad either -- feels half-finished, more than anything. Crenna and Delon are friends; they're also on different sides of the law, with Delon a cop and Crenna secretly the head of a gang of thieves who specialize in risky heists. On the other hand, Delon is secretly carrying on with Catherine Denuve, Crenna's girlfriend. Plot too allusive for it's own good -- a bit more grounding of the characters are needed, since their motivations as it stands are opaque (why are Delon and Crenna friends? why is Delon carrying on with Deneuve? if Crenna knows, as he seems to, why is he allowing it? what does Denuve think of all this?). Low budget also hurts the movie -- the centerpiece of the film, an elaborate heist on board a moving train, looks phony and very cheap. (This is a rare movie that probably would benefit from a remake). On the other hand, Melville remains a master of gloomy atmosphere, the setpieces more or less work (the opening sequence, a bank robbery in a cold and rainy seaside town, is well done) and the actors all give it their best. Final shot of the movie is very well done.

This is a film so good, in how it understands the minutiae of film, the mechanics as it were, and done with so much straight-forward conviction that it amazes deeply.

It is lean, the form refined, like a piece of wood patiently chiseled by the ebbs.

So as with previous Melville films, it is distant, surely cold, clinical business. It's about characters detached from the world they experience, content to glide through without attachments. A world as grey, dreary and sullen as the faces of the characters, one reflected in the other. The pace is minimalist and monotonous, the movie plodding along in a steady and unflagging hypnosis as if it does not progress at all.

It seems to hang suspended in the middle distance, the plot laconic in what it reveals as much as the dialogue, yet it flows towards its inevitable and cold end in an unnoticeable succession of undeviating changes. A phone-call, a newspaper clipping, a man setting down to eat in a restaurant. Before you know it a man is getting shot.

It's part slow erotic foreplay about cinematic crime, remember the scene with Deneuve and the gun, and part a feel that is the present moment unfettered by any including cinematic baggage. You just watch.

Un Flic is a French gangster caper film with many intriguing qualities. Visually, it is really interesting. The color choices demand repeated viewing. I like how there are seldom light colors seen (except for Deneuve's platinum hair and the smuggled cocaine). The muted color scheme generates a lot of gritty atmosphere to help draw you into Melville's nightmarish vision.

The plot is difficult to follow. I'm not really sure about several key points. For example, police officer (chief?) Coleman (Alain Delon) learns the name of the gangster the others had killed in a hospital. From that piece of information, they quickly trap the driver/helicopter pilot at a restaurant? Also, with the physically imposing driver/pilot in police custody, how does Coleman manage to break his spirit sufficiently to nab the rest of the gang? Torture would be needed, but no information is supplied to confirm it was used.

Much has been said about the obviously fake model train and helicopter that Melville shows for the second heist scene. I'm fine with it. (Gosh only knows how much it would cost to lease a train, a helicopter and pilots for a day.) The relationship between Delon's Coleman and Richard Crenna's Simon is a major theme. Coleman is a world-weary and cynical policeman who will employ brutal methods to solve crimes. Simon is an energetic and brave gangster/bank robber. Coleman is more romantically interesting to Catherine Deneuve's Cathy. However, Simon's courage during heist #2 probably wins the audience over. At the film's end we tend to like Simon more than Coleman.

Deneuve's Cathy is one of the richest small roles in screen memory. She's not on the screen for many minutes, but when she is, Cathy is a devastatingly enthralling femme fatale.

For a gritty, Hellish view of police and crime life; with three strong performances; along with a few toy trains and a helicopter, 'Un Flic' is One Crime Flick worth seeing.