Grisbi (re-release)

Max is played by Jean Gabin, named "the actor of the century" in a French poll, in Jacques Becker's Touchez Pas au Grisbi, a 1954 French crime film that uncannily points the way toward Jean-Pierre Melville's great "Bob Le Flambeur" the following year.

The magic here is all in the telling: in the graceful, laconic direction of Jacques Becker.

A wonderful treasure from the seemingly inexhaustible cornucopia of crackling French crime dramas.

Jean Gabin wasn't yet 50 when he starred as a big-time, high-style gangster hoping to retire, but he still looks pretty wasted, and this pungent tale about aging and friendship, adapted from a best-selling noir thriller by Albert Simonin, would be hard to imagine without his puffy features.

Grisbi is hard (new subtitles bring out the chill of the gangsters' argot) and gray: a meditation on what we are left with when life has let us down, played out in the haunted eyes of Jean Gabin.

Jeanne Moreau turns in a neat bit as a moll and Dary as the inarticulate aging Romeo friend is memorable.

Often confusing, especially during the first half, but Gabin and Ventura are well cast as hoods.