Un Flic [Dirty Money] **** (1972, Alain Delon, Catherine Deneuve, Richard Crenna) – Classic Movie Review 2821

Writer-director Jean-Pierre Melville’s rousing, stylishly stylised 1972 French crime thriller Un Flic [Dirty Money] features an ideally cast Alain Delon as a rough cop (un flic) and Richard Crenna as a tough hoodlum, two truly tough guys involved in robbery and drug smuggling. Catherine Deneuve also appears – grandly though all too briefly – as the love interest Cathy, whom Delon shares with Crenna.

Delon previously worked with Melville on Le Samourai (1967) and Le Cercle Rouge (1970) playing the criminals, but here he plays the cop and comes up with one of his most complex and masterly performances. HIs blank stares and sudden bursts of violence are scary.

Police inspector Commissaire Edouard Coleman is investigating a lethal bank robbery, a drug smuggling operation and a train heist and tracks the problems back to his good friend Simon, a Paris night club owner and criminal gang leader.

Delon plays the flawed hero Edouard Coleman, this time in pursuit of Crenna’s elusive notorious Paris thief Simon. Delon’s character borrows in part from the archetypal respected police commissioner detective Maigret, but he is also in part an unashamed killer not that much different in style and spirit from his Le Samourai character. There is a question mark over Coleman’s sexuality, interesting himself in a gay thief and a transvestite informer. What is to be made of this? He just seems a truly disturbed, ambiguous character, and dangerous too, at least as dangerous as the criminals. The criminals seem to be romanticised, while the cop is an alienated and alienating character, a lost loner in the world of cops and robbers, where he cannot fit in. In contrast, the robbers all fit in nicely, perhaps it is their world. There is a whiff of homophobia here, though it is presumably supposed to be the result of Coleman’s inner conflicts, but it still leaves a nasty taste.

Crenna is an odd choice as the robbers’ leader Simon, who owns a nightclub visited regularly Coleman, but his crumpled charm seems to fit the devious character. Deneuve oozes calculating hardness as the beautiful femme fatale, Simon’s mistress who spends afternoons with Coleman in a hotel room. She is as appalling a character as Coleman. No one would have any time for her if she wasn’t beautiful.

Michael Conrad as Louis Costa, Paul Crauchet as Morand and more briefly André Pousse as Marc Albouis are all excellent as the other criminals. But the side issue plot involving Riccardo Cucciolla as bank manager Paul Weber and Simone Valère as Paul’s wife is considerably less interesting, a bit of a cul-de-sac.

What a desperately bleak world Melville paints both in his screenplay and in Walter Wottitz’s extraordinary Eastmancolor cinematography! Was there ever any actual colour in it?

Finally, a quick shout for Michel Colombier’s score, moody and effective.

This is sadly the last film of great French director Melville, but it is a great swansong, most slick, satisfying and entertaining. Delon and Melville were on a roll. This scores their hat trick. Melville died of a heart attack while dining at a restaurant in Paris on August 2 1973, aged 55.

The dubbing in the cut English language version called Dirty Money is a problem – but the original French version Un Flic is now finally subtitled and available in circulation in the UK and US and greatly to be preferred. Another problem could be that audiences need to be prepared for some outrageous train (and helicopter) models, back projections and phony-looking sets, in the old-fashioned Hitchcock style. These rather spoil the central 20-minute train heist, and detract somewhat from the rest of the film’s brilliant location filming, as atmospheric as it is stylish. However, some may find them charming in their pre-CGI splendour.

The initial bank job in a seaside town is strikingly well shot, an exercise in mounting unease and tension, and in making an old situation fresh through inspired film-making, and much of the Paris exterior shooting is truly eye-catching.

Also in the cast are Riccardo Cucciolla, Michael Conrad, Simone Valère, Jean Desailly, André Pousse, Valérie Wilson, Henri Marteau and Paul Crauchet.

The crew includes Sophie Tati (editing department) and Pierre Tati (second assistant director), Jacques Tati’s son and daughter.

The cast are Alain Delon as Commissaire Edouard Coleman, Richard Crenna as Simon, Catherine Deneuve as Cathy, Riccardo Cucciolla as Paul Weber, Michael Conrad as Louis Costa, Paul Crauchet as Morand, Simone Valère as Paul’s wife, André Pousse as Marc Albouis, Jean Desailly as distinguished gentleman robbed of a statue, Valérie Wilson as Gaby, Henri Marteau as Police officer instructor of shooting.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2821

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