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Dawn in Montmartre, heaven and hell, portrait of "un vieux jeune homme." (The neon billboards dormant by sunrise come to life as Cocteau emblems in Pigalle's nocturnal netherworld, "Narcisse," "Le Sphinx," etc.) Bob the High Roller (Roger Duchesne) is a gentleman-crook with Bogart's fedora on his gray head and the deadpan of a lifelong bluffer, on friendly terms with the inspector (Guy Decomble) ever since the Rimbaud Bank robbery. "I was born with an ace in my palm," now he floats dapperly from one losing game to another, drives a convertible up to the Head or Tails Bar, and follows his own code amid pimps and mugs. Trick coin in the pocket and slot-machine in the closet, apparatus of the gambler who just cannot resist one last score. The "commando unit" recruited for the casino heist includes the laddish protégé (Daniel Cauchy), whose aping of the older man's brand of cool extends to falling for the beret-wearing kitten (Isabelle Corey). "L'audace, toujours l'audace." Jean-Pierre Melville's sly and svelte noir comedy strikes an articulate cinephilic give-and-take, Casablanca and The Asphalt Jungle behind it and Heat and Hard Eight ahead of it. ("Was he really the first to copy American hoods?" "Actually, it was the Yanks who copied...") The caper is rehearsed in an open field and imagined as a wordless ballet of halls and guns, a visit to the racetrack and a lesson in safe-cracking are integral to the silvery suit of images. For all the comely blabbermouths and shrewish wives, Melville's great duplicitous bitch remains Lady Luck, who mesmerizes the gangster at the roulette and brings down the house of cards. "Happy now, asshole? You won." Godard helps himself to the cocky punk riddled with bullets, the Cadillac on the vacant beach materializes in Demy's Lola. Cinematography by Henri Decaë. With André Garet, Claude Cerval, Gérard Buhr, Simone Paris, and Howard Vernon. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |