Rating: 4/5
Criterion Challenge 2022 | 50/52 | Random number generator (#271)
While sitting at Madame Bouche’s restaurant, a man hands Max the newspaper. The newspaper details gold bars stolen last month and how the police have no clues. Max sits at a table with Riton, Riton’s much younger girlfriend, Josy, and her friend Lola. Josy begs Max to see her and Lola’s burlesque show. Madame Bouche tries to close the restaurant for Max and his crew, but Marco slips in. Max settles Marco’s tab at Bouche’s and reluctantly agrees to attend the show.
Marinette, Josy and Lola’s boss, gets mad at them for being late, but Max, who seems to know Marinette, explains. Marinette gives Max, Riton, and Marco the best seat in the house—Max would expect nothing less. While Josy and Lola perform, a woman grabs Max to speak with Angelo in Pierrot’s office. Angelo and Pierrot are having a dispute regarding Angelo’s drug pusher, Ramon, whom Pierrot doesn’t trust. So, Max enlists Marco to take the job. While leaving, Max stops by Josy’s dressing room to congratulate her, only to find her and Angelo making out. Josy confesses that she no longer loves Riton and asks him to tell Riton.
On the way home, Max’s cabbie notices an ambulance tailing them. They pull off to Max’s apartment, where Max hides, waiting for the ambulance-driving hoods. When they get up to his place on the elevator, Max sees it’s Ramon and an associate. Max fires off some warning shots and slips away. At a bar, Max calls Riton to warn him about Angelo, but Angelo is already there, discussing business with Riton. Max has Riton send them off and meet him at a hideout. There, Max shows Riton where he’s stashed the gold bars they stole and tells Riton how careful he’s been. With Angelo on them, Max suspects Riton has not been as cautious.
When Max thought he was out, the game pulled him back in. Will he make it out alive?
The film helped revitalize Gabin’s career, whom the new generation of filmmakers saw as a member of the old guard. Though director Jacques Becker was reluctant to give Gabin the role, Gabin is perfect as the middle-aged, world-weary gangster looking to settle his scores and get out of the game.
For the conventional gangster, the job is life, and one that’s hard to put down. For Max, the job is a job—what he does to support the life he actually wants to lead. He doesn’t need any more power—he has enough and wouldn’t mind losing some so that he could lose some of the attention. His crew and associates aren’t his lifelong friends but merely the people he’s come up with in a career that doesn’t allow one to create connections. Even though he’s known Riton for 20 years, their closeness is little more than proximity. That is, until Riton’s life is at stake.
In this way, the film also changed how the French handled the gangster flick, blending the classic noir-esque elements with more somber meditations on aging and lost opportunities. While sitting at the club, Max points out to Riton all the older men paying for dances with the young girls, playing the fool who doesn’t realize his time is up. About halfway through the movie, we get the one voiceover where Max laments the time he’s invested in Riton and where it has left him in life.
It’s hard to pinpoint what you might call “style” in the filmmaking. Its unadorned, meat-and-potato storytelling puts every moment on an equal playing field by drawing attention to none. We enter and exit Max’s life, getting a glimpse of it, only knowing him through his routine and those pesky interruptions.
This movie doesn’t come up much in conversations around French cinema. It emerged in a weird middle period, after WWII and before the French New Wave. I’m thankful for a random number generator that allowed me to see this seminal and under-respected film.