Jacques Becker made crime films that stressed the ordinary existence of extraordinary criminals; every note I've read about Touchez pas au grisbi includes the revelation that it dutifully includes a scene where the tough-guy heroes brush their teeth. Many American movie gangsters got their style from the costume department and the work of good lighting cameramen, but here in the Paris of Simonin and Auguste le Breton the crooks seem to exude style out of their pores. The nightlife in Michel Jourdan's club and their favorite diner is kept separate from that of square civilians. We even see some tourist types being directed to another restaurant.

The cozy clannishness of the crooks is entirely deceptive, as everybody watches everybody else for a way to throw a wedge into a good thing. Lino Ventura's Angelo is a drug dealer who stays polite but has no qualms against kidnapping and extortion to cheat Max and Riton out of their ill-gotten gold. The normal women that our heroes run with are disloyal bitches (that's what Max decides, anyway) that snort cocaine (on camera, in detail, 1954!) and sell themselves to the highest bidder.

The characterizations are deep and mellow. Max is backing off of the high life because he doesn't want to turn into one of the geezers on the dance floor who has to buy the company of women. He tries to point this out to his still-vain partner ("look at the bags under your eyes!") to no avail; Riton's urge for Moreau's Rosy is the undoing of all their plans.

While Hollywood films were stressing the ruthless impersonality of modern American crime, Touchez pas au grisbi involves us in a deep meditation on loyalty. Max's entire life is invested in those gold bars hidden in the trunk of a parked car, but he's immediately ready to forfeit them to redeem Riton from their enemies. Nightclub owner Marco is a tough customer who uses tactics obviously learned during the German occupation, and is ready to torture punk gunsel Fifi (Daniel Cauchy of Bob le flambeur) in a special room that might have seen use against collaborators (or the resistance, perhaps). When push comes to shove, Max's true friends come to his aid. War-era machine guns are distributed from secret caches, and the hunt is on.

We side with Max from the start when he pays a young crook's lunch tab and sets him up for a job with Angelo. Although the irony is acute, Max never grouses that the fellow's first assignment is to extort money from his benefactor. Such things are taken as natural occurences.

The other big star of Touchez pas au grisbi is Paris itself. Starting with a pan over gray rooftops to the Moulin Rouge, every scene is a visual treat. This is the city that once existed, before modern glass buildings took over. We enjoy every cobblestoned street and decorated foyer. Max holds up two would-be kidnappers in an open-frame elevator, and even his parking garage has interesting accordion grates to protect the cars. Many films noir took place in generic city street sets, but here we get a rich look at a real past.

Criterion's DVD of Touchez pas au grisbi shows the benefit of digital restoration for video; I saw a Rialto print of this picture on a screen a year ago and the disc looks and sounds much, much better. The slick B&W photography is a pleasure to watch and there are few if any marks on the print.

The extras include a trailer and several interview excerpts, mostly culled from earlier French docus. Daniel Cauchy is in a new (2002) piece, while Lino Ventura and composer Jean Weiner (Max has a nifty harmonica theme) come from older material. A slightly longer piece has snippets from screenwriter Maurice Griffe, Albert Simonin and Francois Truffaut. Both they and the insightful insert essayists Philip Kemp and Geoffrey O'Brien stress the fact that director Jacques Becker Le trou worked in the same cultural blind spot as fellow Frenchman Georges Franju, after the classics (Becker was assistant director to Jean Renoir during his best period) but before the New Wave.

Just because Savant wasn't aware of these pictures doesn't mean they weren't distributed in the U.S., but they have to be considered obscure over here. The flow of classy genre fare from Europe on DVD only seems to get better. When I first read about Touchez pas au grisbi about ten years ago I had no idea it would ever surface for us to enjoy. DVD is in a very exciting stage.

On a scale of Excellent, Good, Fair, and Poor, Touchez pas au grisbi rates:
Movie: Excellent
Video: Excellent
Sound: Excellent
Supplements: interview clips, archival and new, original trailer
Packaging: Keep case
Reviewed: February 6, 2005