1963 ‘Mélodie en sous-sol’ Directed by Henri Verneuil
Charles, fresh out of jail, rejects his wife's plan for a quiet life of bourgeois respectability. He enlists a former cell mate, Francis, to assist him in pulling off one final score, a carefully planned assault on the vault of a Cannes casino.
Cité Films Compagnia Cinematografica Mondiale (CCM) Compagnie Internationale de Productions Cinématographiques (CIPRA)
The Big Snatch, Gran jugada en la Costa Azul, Ληστεία στο Μόντε Κάρλο, Lautlos wie die Nacht, 地下室のメロディ
Firmly in the tradition of classic french capers like Rififi and Bob le flambeur comes Any Number Can Win — a complex and decidedly cool heist flick that more than delivers. Jean Gabin plays an aging con, recently released from prison who in pursuit of the mythical ‘last score’ enlists a cocky ex-cellmate (Alain Delon) in order to take down a Cannes casino.
Gabin and Delon are in top form portraying crafty crooks filled trickery and deceit instead of tired-old ‘criminals with conscience’ and share a delicious rivalrous dynamic. The scenes where the punk thief’s impetuous ways collide with veteran’s hardcore professionalism are an absolute delight.
Crime-savvy director Henri Verneuil eschews high octane action in favour of a deliberately paced…
French heist movies will never be not cool. Any Number Can Win is no different. The jazzy soundtrack, the cold way characters do business, the effortless charm of Alain Delon and the tension rising as the minutes go by until it reaches a heart-breaking climax in the end. Melville probably watched this and fell in love with Delon.
Verneuil with another wonderful heist film. The Sicilian clan is one of my favorite movies of all time and through that I gave this a try especially again for this magnificent duo of Alain Delon and Jean Gabin. Two legends in amazing roles.
The score this time isn’t from morricone which I would thought makes it worse but it doesn’t. Sure it hasn’t auch a legendary theme like the Sicilian clan but the jazzy casino sounds are totally suited. Only that it’s too predictable and some lengths are in it, makes it not better for me.
How cool does a widescreen '60's French black and white heist flick set on the French Riviera with a hip jazzy score and starring two generations of Gallic uber-manhood (Jean Gabin and Alain Delon) sound to you?!
Well, if the answer to that question is 'Cooler than Kool and the Gang after an ice bath', then get your peepers all over Henri Verneuil's crime drama, because I'll doubt you'll be disappointed. From the moment the credits roll as Gabin makes his way back home after a five year stretch in the slammer, right up until a post-robbery denouement which - consciously or unconsciously, I have no idea! - riffs on the final moments of John Huston's The Treasure Of The…
Pretty good French caper. The first of the threee movies Jean Gabin and Alain Delon did together and very much about the stars tension. They collaborate on the heist (Gabin masterminds it, Delon does most of the physical work), but don't exactly work together. Sections of the film are just dominated by either and part of the pleasure is how Verneuil just pitches scenes to either of its stars rhythms. They less share screen time as take turns into dominating the procedural. For a heist movie. it is unusual into that it is not desperate, but bitter, the money is almost entirely an abstract proposition, a symbol of power. The generation gap remains central. If in Grisbi (which it deliberate…
I love watching people who are very good at their job.
Jean Gabin's job is heists. He's the very definition of a career criminal. He gets out of prison, quickly pops in to say hello to his wife, then he's off assembling a couple of assistants for his next robbery. He knows who he wants, what he wants them to do, and how he's going to do it. He gets almost all of his side of the bargain correct - but has he chosen the right lads to help him?
That's the excellent quandary at the centre of Any Number Can Win, the third consecutive banger out of three that I've seen from Henri Verneuil.…
Recorded from TV
Important heist cinema from the heyday of European genre film, with three distinctive names in its hand luggage. Henri Verneuil, Jean Gabin and Alain Delon.
The oh so cool Ocean trilogy of Steven Soderbergh has leased the planned coolness in this millennium for itself, because George, Brad and Matt plus appendages in a cut thunderstorm meet up there, but what is THAT here please? That's how you rob a casino in style and above all "cool" (the word practically hovers over the film). "Any Number Can Win" (in the German version "Lautlos wie die Nacht"-Silent as the Night) already has the cigarette after sex on the bedside table. That's how cool this is.
Charles (Jean Gabin), who…
De Niro and Zac Efron should have remade this rather than make Dirty Grandpa. Gabin gets to chew out Delon in all their scenes together, often while wearing pyjamas. Not the greatest casino heist film, nor the best French 60s crime film. Perhaps not even the best Gabin / Delon collaboration. But it’s a Gabin / Delon 60s French casino heist film, and you’ve gotta pay that.
Ocean’s...Deux? This French New Wave heist thriller exudes jazzy coastal glitz and radiates with the dual star-power of Jean Gabin and a pre-Samourai Alain Delon. Gabin plays pragmatic professional criminal Charles, the sort who speaks with experience-hewed curtness, who hides no secrets from his loyal loving wife. Delon plays young cocky rookie Francis, as cool and slick as expected. Once former cellmates, the two are working a daring casino caper, with Delon conning his way around security as a romancing playboy. But the hotheaded pleasures of his facade might just tank the entire job...
Henri Verneuil directs this with an assured smoothness, casually shifting from protagonist introductions to heist execution with a measured pace that has time for a bathhouse…
Aw yeah, when you hit play on a French crime caper, this is exactly what you want. Brassy swing and upbeat jazz, modernist Googie architecture and cinematography that takes advantage of it, a casino in an exotic locale, time-displaced voiceover describing the plan for a robbery as you see it unfold onscreen.
What separates this movie from other midcentury heists is how breezy and light it is. Plotwise the stakes are high, but tonally they are low. It never really feels like death is on the line. Contemporary heist movies want you to bite your nails until your fingers bleed, but I honestly don't need overbearing suspense to have a good time.
Gabin and Delon are excellent, with Gabin representing…
Em honra do centenário de Henri Verneuil.
Deliciosamente estiloso e basicamente onde Gabin passa o cetro a Delon como rei do polar, mas talvez eu tivesse gostado mais se os personagens não fossem tão burros, embora seja a burrice que nos leva aos belíssimos planos finais.
Box Versátil Fime Noir Francês Volume 2.
