Alain Delon and Yves Montand team up to pull off a heist in Melville’s classic crime film that looks both backwards and forwards
Jean-Pierre Melville’s terrifically enjoyable noir classic looks even cooler with this reissue. Alain Delon is the ex-con tipped off about the ideal jewellery heist by a
prison guard; Yves Montand is the alcoholic ex-cop whose rifle marksmanship is vital to the plan. Melville blends the Chandleresque world of his own devising with gritty French reality. With its taut silent robbery sequence, his movie gestures backwards to Rififi, and with Montand’s specially modified bullets it anticipates Frederick Forsyth’s Day of the Jackal and the contemporary techno-thriller. A treat.