GManfred Max and Riton are ageing gangsters who are trying to 'retire' after their latest big heist. Early on in a night club scene, Max intimates he would rather go home and sleep as he is tiring of night-clubbing and the late hours. Riton, his best and oldest friend, is trying to stay youthful, although unknown to him, he is getting cuckolded by a younger man right there at the club.The bond between the friends is insoluble, even though they grouse inwardly about each other. If you ever had a lifetime friend, you will instantly connect with these two - you will just know the link. Anyway, without giving too much away, another crook wants to muscle in on their windfall with an undeserved split via the extortion route. That's all I can tell you, but get the DVD.Max (played by the great Jean Gabin) has a secret pad, and to avoid trouble, invites Riton to stay overnight. These two are such old friends that, in a scene as humorous as it is tinged with melancholy, Max produces a pair of pajamas and a toothbrush for his old pal (remember sleepovers with a friend?).The film takes a while to get underway, and all the action is toward the end of the picture, but you can overlook the pacing as it is an unforgettable homage to friendship and advancing age. Adding to the generational disconnect is the use of obsolete slang, as when Max calls someone 'Daddy-O' (Actually, it must have fit better in its initial release in 1954, but seems completely out-of-date now)."Touchez Pas Au Grisbi" plays like a film noir/buddy picture and is thoroughly enjoyable and entertaining, Film buffs may recognize Jean Moreau as Riton's unfaithful girlfriend.

runamokprods As Truffaut stated, this is really more a film about friendship and aging than about gangsters.Jean Gabin is brilliant as Max, the elegant, dignified underworld leader who is growing tired, and wants to retire quietly off his last score. This is a film that lives in the brilliant human details. We never see the big heist itself – it's already over when the film starts. But we do see Gabin brushing his teeth, looking at the bags under his eyes in the mirror, etc. Now it's all about finding a way to close the books on a career, and still protect his best friend and colleague, who becomes a target when other mobsters want to get their hands on the take.The story itself could be called thin, but Becker fills it with so many telling human moments and details that I was touched and involved. Yes, there were a few places where the plot, logic, or motivation holes bugged me just a touch. However, I suspect I'll warm to this even further on a eagerly anticipated second viewing.

Polaris_DiB "Touchez pas au grisbi" begins somewhat in media res, in that the defining moment that leads to the rest of the story--the theft of the grisbi (loot)--happens before the cameras even begin running. This is a film not really about the events that take place within the narrative, but the moments that define the characters between those events: the mobsters brushing their teeth, sitting and eating, discussing their lives.Jean Gabin stars as another aged, ennui-filled mobster, this time a little older and a little more tired than ol' Pepe le Moko. Everything in his role is pure class... a man tired of the fast and frivolous days and just wanting to retire to a quiet life with a woman who's not a showgirl. Unfortunately the blunderous activities of his partner-in-crime keep him trapped in the usual gangster world of deceit, double-crossings, and danger.This movie fits closely to Becker's attempt to create a film "without a beginning or an end, and with little plot in between." Most of the character development in this movie is implied, though very well. A sense of fullness, and history, of experience pervades every character in this movie as if this were the third Godfather movie or some piece of a serial about people the audience knows well, however most of these characters are pretty much introduced at random and leave just as readily. Most of what works within this film is the quieter moments when the characters are left to be themselves, not what others demand in them.This movie has been called very influential, but it's not without its own influences. As stated above, Gabin's performance is somewhat related to the fatigued gangster of such films as "Pepe le Moko", and it's not without its moments of film noir style lighting.Another hugely influential part of this movie is its score, which is actually very minimalistic and reserved. Max's favorite song, the one he plays on the jukebox, is played in pieces throughout most of the movie and most of the time during a moment when Max loses control of the events currently surrounding him. It's a mournful, nostalgic tune... and I also can't help but think that it has to be in some way an inspiration to the Godfather movie score.--PolarisDiB

palmiro Like his masterpiece, 'Le trou', this film embodies Becker's distinctive vision of the world. We are given a portrait of a bond of love between two men--a kind of love which is beyond anything a man and a woman can know. But this is not Oscar Wilde's 'love which dare not speak its name': there is no hint of homoerotic sexuality. Rather, this is the bond of the trenches and the workplace (presumably class and underworld trenches in the case of the protagonists), a theme which has a tremendous atavistic resonance in French culture and history insofar as it reflects a collective male experience extending from the Napoleonic Wars through the Paris Commune down through WWI--the kind of camaraderie for life which predisposed a man to sacrifice all that he holds dear for another man (another instance of this is in Jean Vermillon's 'Gueule d'amour'), and hinted at in a sentimental, nuanced way when Max breaks out the foie gras and a bottle of blanc after his buddy has made a costly bonehead move. Note also that incredible sigh of utter lassitude that 'Max' (Jean Gabin) heaves as he sits through yet another girly show--or that look on his face as 'Betty' asks him if he loves her (after he's slept with her)--a look which tells us his every thought is on his pal, 'Riton'. This is not to say that women are portrayed throughout in a disparaging light: "Mme. Bouche", the owner of the restaurant and 'Marinette', the nightclub owner's wife (a wonderfully subtle portrait of uxorial solicitude and anxiety) are both characters who reinforce and serve male solidarity. But there's the suggestion that when the male/female bond involves sexuality, a guy can lose his head and forget about his mates.This male/female divide appears to overshadow class divisions, which were to be at the heart of Becker's 'Le trou.' Still we can see Becker's communist sympathies coming through in oblique ways. Max is the engaging, attractive character that he is because of his fierce devotion to others, his liberality of spirit (after he leaves a huge tip to the petit-bourgeois owner of the cafe' in the process of recycling leftover wine, the latter remarks, 'We could use more customers like him'), the value he places on his pal's life over the loot, the easy way he has with trusting and receiving the trust of others--all these things are non-commercial values and they suggest a world and way of life alternative to what America has in store for France. Note, for example, how the camera lingers on the road sign at the scene of the first shootout: 'Autoroute a' l'ouest', 'Expressway to the west'. It's the same road Max and his pals rush down and that takes them straight to the disaster with the loot. The promise of riches that America ('the West') tantalizingly dangled before the French in the form of the Marshall Plan was not to be taken up without heavy costs. Pauvre Max: in the end he cannot cry at the loss of his buddy (though I cried for him): he cannot express his grief because he is now in the company of "Betty", his American doll and source of support (fittingly played by a real-life Miss America of 1946).Sure made me feel as though I should have spent more of my life in France.