My Review of “Touchez Pas Au Grisbi” (Don’t Touch the Loot)
Director: Jacques Becker
Writers: Jacques Becker, Maurice Griffe, Albert Simonin
Based on the novel by Albert Simonin
Starring: Jean Gabin, René Dary, Jeanne Moreau, Dora Doll, Marilyn Buferd, Lino Ventura, Paul Frankeur, Michel Jourdan, Daniel Cauchy
Running Time: 96 Minutes
Puma Rating: Two Paws Up
I don’t normally indulge in colloquialisms, but this movie is FREAKING COOL!!! A masterpiece of brilliant pacing, dynamic storytelling, and understated performances, “Touchez Pas Au Grisbi” will wrap itself around you and never let go until the devastating final seconds. Much like I do when my human is late with dinner.
The film opens in 1954 Paris, where two aging gangsters, Max (Jean Gabin) and Riton (René Dary), are sitting with their dancer girlfriends in a café that only serves criminals. It is obvious that Max and Riton have seen it all and are thoroughly unimpressed. As their much younger showgirl sweethearts simper and purr next to them, the two men regard everything around them with a coolly detached air, their hearts so closely guarded that only the most significant events can shatter their carefully crafted tough guy personas. In lesser hands, the characters of Max and Riton could have been portrayed as one-note thugs. But Gabin and Dary exude an effortless charisma and versatility that makes them compulsively watchable. Confidence, anger, vulnerability, and existential sorrow flit across their features with raw but contained power. As their mistresses Josey and Lola, Jeanne Moreau and Dora Doll, respectively, are at turns vulnerable and calculating.
As if these four central performances were not enough, “Touchez Pas Au Grisbi” pulsates with vibrant, unadulterated life in every frame. Beyond our four central players, the idiosyncratic criminal café boasts an intriguing ensemble in which even the most minor of players is clearly nursing a secret. From there, a date at a nightclub where Lola and Josey dance becomes a portrait of a segment of Parisian life that lives fast, drinks hard, loves voraciously and refuses to moderate its noise. Every sight and sound are imbued with a joyful boisterousness that becomes the perfect contrast to Max and Riton’s dispassionate demeanor. All around them, slice of life incidents happen – an electrician who grabs the dancers’ bottoms, old men dancing with girls using flattery and adulation to get what they want. As long as Max and Riton have power, strangers and events swirl around them without the slightest pause.
Yet, something shifts when Max and Riton are threatened with losing that power and their lives. Having pulled off a secret heist at an airport that netted them 50 million francs’ worth of gold bars, Max and Riton are quietly looking forward to a nice retirement once they split the money and leave the criminal underworld. But a momentary indiscretion on Riton’s part imperils that future. An incredible transition occurs when Max and Riton are no longer powerhouse assets in the criminal world, but targets. A stunning sequence of point-of-view shots quickly alternating between Max, the driver taking him home from the club and the henchmen who are sent to kill him mark the new danger in Max and Riton’s lives. A chase sequence in Max’s main apartment building, in which his super becomes unwittingly involved, is the highlight of the film. Where once there was relaxation and joy, there is now a suspense that fuels the audience as they watch Max outrun and outsmart these assassins. You don’t necessarily like Max – not yet – but you empathize with the newfound sensation of being prey that has befallen a formidable predator.
After that sequence, the shift is more pronounced, perhaps in service to the thoughts and feelings that Max and Riton are undergoing with their lives at stake. Scenes become less dense with life and more solitary, as Max and Riton find themselves alone against former friends who now want what they have. Dialogues, confrontations, and alliances ensue, in scenes that mainly feature up to six characters and no more. Where once there were clubs and cafes teeming with music and endless chatter, there are now secret car parks, solitary apartments, dark basements, desolate country roads. The transition is made even more effective by the relative silence of these scenes, shattered only by moments when Max, Riton and the few allies they have left choose to speak. Large ensemble scenes give way to various two-character scenes with close framing, in which fears, and frustrations are expressed aloud.
The most striking frames show Max and Riton alone together in a secret flat in which they have found refuge after attempts on their lives. The two men talk, brush their teeth, change into their pajamas, and go to bed. It is an unusual scene for a heist film and yet it illustrates Max and Riton’s humanity. They may be prominent criminals in front of showgirls and other deviants, but away from that world they are simply just ordinary, vulnerable men who yearn for a quieter life. In a genre that is prone to making its characters larger than life, these softer moments make Max and Riton more accessible to the audience. Thieves – they’re just like us!
Yet, much of the movie would not work if it were not for the central friendship between Max and Riton. Gabin and Dary have an unforced chemistry. Their interactions have a push-pull quality in which both actors share the screen and respond to each other in a manner suggesting an unspoken history of mutual reliance and connection. Two solitary men, Riton may get on Max’s nerves but both men know that the greatest, most trustworthy relationship they will ever have is with each other.
Other notable performances include Paul Frankeur, who imbues his gangster boss Pierrot with gentle malice, and Lino Ventura who plays Max and Riton’s main antagonist Angelo. Rather than opting for the typical sneering, sadistic villain portrayal, Ventura plays Angelo as an oily snake who knows how to mask his malignant nature until necessity demands violence.
Even more impressive is Director Jacques Becker’s choice to eschew heist picture conventions in favor of a more realistic tone. For instance, voice over is used only once, when Max is having a crisis of faith in Riton. Most of the time, what you see onscreen is what the characters, in their spoken words and actions, have allowed you to see. The only music that is played are tunes provided by the characters themselves, such as the loud club music at Lola and Josey’s nightclub. Only one pop song is used at the end, to illustrate the torrent of emotions that are experienced by the characters once all loose ends have been tied up at journey’s end. In a typically outlandish genre, Becker opts to give “Touchez Pas Au Grisbi” its own kind of stylishness that is steeped solely in realism. The audience is all the better for it. A brilliant and evocative film that will leave you breathless and engaged at every second. See it.
