Paris’s Montmartre neighborhood is a den of vice in Jacques Becker’s Touchez Pas au Grisbi, a busy world of prostitutes, nightclubs, secret backrooms, and slickly dressed gangsters with heavy appetites for life. Yet despite its element of seediness, the film’s milieu is defined even more strongly through routine, ritual, and quotidian detail. Max (Jean Gabin), one of his criminal world’s elder statesmen, is given to strolling around town, and when he stops in at a popular club or his regular hangout, Madame Bouche’s (Denise Clair) restaurant, you’re struck by the ease with which he occupies these spaces. One gets the distinct sense that he knows exactly what he’s walking into when he passes through virtually any doorway, and if he doesn’t, it’s too late for him to do anything about it.
Max’s leisurely gait suggests that he’s paid his dues and earned the respect of friends and enemies alike, not to mention that he’s aware of being in the twilight of his career. As the pretty young women who accompany his friends beg to draw out one night’s festivities, Max begrudgingly admits that “after midnight, I always feel like I’m doing overtime.” Predictability is a comfort to the old hand, as evidenced by his habit of putting on Jean Wiener’s melancholy jazz song “Le Grisbi” on Madame Bouche’s jukebox or his record player at home. And the slow, lilting quality of the song is in sync with Max’s pace, as well as that of the film.
Touchez Pas au Grisbi homes in on the conflicts that arise when a veteran criminal attempts to extract himself from the underworld where he’s built his life, setting the template for that archetype and directly influencing Bob le Flambeur, which is also set in Montmartre. But where Jean-Pierre Melville’s 1956 film followed Roger Duchesne’s Bob as he planned one last heist before retirement, Touchez Pas au Grisbi begins after Max has already successfully executed his final job. Max has long had a symbiotic relationship with this perilous world, and while he’s built a reputation that’s made him a mentor and paragon to many, he’s become a target to others. Riding off into the sunset would be ideal for him, but Max is painfully aware that retirement in his line of work more often than not ends with a bullet.
As with everything he does, Max is as meticulous in stealing 50 million francs in gold bars from a shipment at Paris’s Orly Airport as he is in hiding the loot away in the garage of a secret apartment he keeps on the other side of town. Of course, word of Max’s score gets around fast, and the area’s other big-shot crooks, like Angelo (Lino Ventura), start to sniff out the bounty with the efficiency of bloodhounds. Becker, however, is no hurry to build to explosive set pieces, instead preferring to soak in the ambiance of Max’s domain. As such, the film’s subsequent double crosses and betrayals play out like a carefully plotted game of chess, and with the same casual, languorous pacing with which Max moves about town.
Throughout Touchez Pas au Grisbi, Becker makes his chosen milieu come alive through a fierce fixation on the most minute of details. In capturing the myriad ways that characters interact with one another, he elucidates the complicated and deeply ingrained psychology that drives the stoic men and women who inhabit this world. And nowhere is this truer than during a lengthy scene where Max takes Riton (René Mary) to his hideaway for the first time. Max and his longtime friend suggest a kind of odd couple, with the smooth and nimble Max always picking up the slack for Riton, who, while loyal to his friend, isn’t the sharpest or most observant man in the room. When they first arrive at Max’s sparsely furnished second home, Max discusses his plan to sell the loot to his uncle (Paul Oettly). Soon, Max begins to playfully mock Riton for being oblivious to how ridiculous he appears in his old age, galavanting with much younger women and relying on Max to get him out of every jam. As they lightly quarrel, the men indulge in crackers and pate, and once they finally turn quiet, Becker’s camera continues to track them as they devote themselves to a series of mundane nighttime rituals: changing into their pajamas, brushing their teeth, Riton examining his face in a mirror for signs of aging, and enjoying a final cigarette after heading to their separate beds.
Most films would deem such a sequence superfluous or indulgent, but Becker understands that Max and Riton’s routines are extensions of their beings, a reflection of their comfort with and closeness to one another, as well as their tendency toward perfectionism. Touchez Pas au Grisbi is full of such seemingly minor yet hyper-attentive moments—of characters lighting cigarettes, pouring champagne, exchanging glances, even tenderly touching another’s face—all of which carry the weight of a life lived where death could happen at any given moment. Although Becker eventually does build up to a thrilling finale, with plenty of gunfire and explosions, it’s the accrual of emotional and psychological complexity through gestures and small, human moments that makes the film such a singularly rich experience.
Image/Sound
There’s a remarkable crispness to the transfer on this Blu-ray. But while backgrounds and faces in close-up are magnificently detailed, there are times where the edges of objects and, more distractingly, faces are so sharply defined that it feels like you’re watching the film through an Instagram filter. A modicum of grain might have corrected that, as well as hid such imperfections as the gel holding Jean Gabin’s wonderful coiffed hair in place. But however digitized the film may seem, there’s a wealth of information to be found in every frame, from the age lines and puffiness of Gabin’s world-weary face to the textures of his countless suits and pair of silk pajamas. The audio is clear, offering clean dialogue exchanges and a nicely balanced mix of sound effects and Jean Wiener’s score.
Extras
On his commentary track, the irresistibly silver-tongued Nick Pinkerton insightfully grapples with Jacques Becker’s aesthetics, and makes a strong case for the director being among the most important and influential artists working in post-World War II France. In addition to breaking down scenes at length and shining a spotlight on Becker’s masterful exploration of environment through a precise attention to details, Pinkerton also discusses the personal and professional histories of various actors, such as Jean Gabin’s dry spell following the war. The Blu-ray also includes several interviews: Critic Ginette Vincendeau speaks to Becker’s enormous influence on the French New Wave; Jacques Becker’s son, Jean, discusses his father’s early work as an assistant director to Jean Renoir and the older Becker’s fondness for Gabin; and Jeanne Moreau recalls her nervousness at working with Gabin and her belief that Becker originally cast her because he liked how small her hands were.
Overall
Jacques Becker’s vivid, exacting portrait of aging gangsters is given a long overdue upgrade to high definition, coupled with several insightful extras.
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