The Thief of Paris

Louis Malle's bitter Belle Époque, with Charles Denner at hand for reference to Chabrol's Landru. The cultivated voleur, bowler-hatted and tweed-suited with grappling hook and crowbar, Jean-Paul Belmondo cannily suppressing his charm. The calm terrorizer of his class is an orphan who's been cheated out of his inheritance, a strange life remembered while burglarizing a mansion. "We don't choose our destiny. But I'm not complaining." The urge comes at the engagement party of the cousin he loves (Geneviève Bujold), he helps himself to the jewels upstairs and joins a larcenous group led by an abbé (Julien Guiomar). Paris to Brussels to London and back, plenty of belles along the way—partner's sister (Marlène Jobert), bordello flower (Françoise Fabian), friend's wife (Martine Sarcey), gold-digger (Marie Dubois). Anarchists try in vain to recruit him, he has his own private raid on the bourgeoisie's strongbox soul. "A very dirty business, but fascinating." Malle's apprenticeship under Bresson informs this complicated mirror of Pickpocket, likewise on a theme beloved to Valéry. "Respectable-looking" enough to be in politics, the young gentleman in the dark cracking safes and smashing cabinets, "a secret pleasure." His mentor is the priest who steals to build churches in China, his bête noire is the grasping uncle (Christian Lude) still reaching for a pistol on his deathbed. La règle du jeu are mentioned, La Chienne is evoked with a chanson from accomplices disguised as street performers. Scabrous drollery, astringent compulsion. "When I arrive in an unknown house, when all is quiet and all those things are there for the taking... I feel as if I were reborn." The nihilistic chill at the close is that of The Fire Within, Murmur of the Heart is a new beginning. With Paul Le Person, Marc Dudicourt, Roger Crouzet, Fernand Guiot, and Bernadette Lafont.