nf0069: when talking about the French gangster film very often and 
paradoxically in French one talks about the policier that's the name of the 
genre so when you you see the word policier er I-E police which relates to the 
police it doesn't necessarily mean that it's to do with a police film or police 
procedure as the you have in the American genres but it's co-, covers all er 
virtually all the films er to do with crime er pretty much from the nineteen-
fifties onwards so er a gangster film and a police film will both be called 
policier in French and sometimes you'll see the in slang this becomes polar er 
i'm sorry i hope it's not too awkward if i move er polar is P-O-L-A-R er is yep 
sf0070: sorry 
nf0069: okay we're just beginning polar is the slang word for policier so le 
polar refers to the genre of the police crime gangster movie in French er 
specifically from the nineteen-fifties late forties fifties onwards and so that 
i will 
talk today about a particular genre or subgenre of French crime films and film 
noir which arises in the mid-fifties especially with three key movies which are 
the ones that are at the top of your handout er and that is Touchez pas au 
Grisbi which i'll refer to as Grisbi er Du Rififi Chez les Hommes ri-, Rififi 
and er Bob le Flambeur the film you're going to see this afternoon er okay and 
er the theme of the lecture in a sense will be that of hybridity and especially 
hybridity between French and American culture French and America cinema er and 
to start starting with literature so that if you look at the bottom of your 
handout there's er a kind of s-, skeleton of the er lecture and er i will start 
with the literary origins of the genre because er when it comes to those 
gangster films those policiers of the mid-fifties starting particularly with 
Touchez pas au Grisbi but also some Eddie Constantine movies er earlier on er 
they are films which are very directly related to er 
literature to crime literature and in particular the famous Serie Noire er 
which i've already mentioned which was an imprint of the er French publisher 
Gallimard er which started at the er immediately at the end of the war and has 
remained extremely successful i brought you so just to make you er like to one 
of these to show you er this is an original Serie Noire book er it's very 
precious to me it actually happens to be the one on which er Goddard's film 
Pierrot le Fou is very loosely based er in English or American it's called 
Obsession and this one in French it's called Le Démon d'Onze Heures if you 
read it it's very very distantly related to Pierrot le Fou in case you know 
that film er but i just wanted to show you er the cover that is the original 
cover er of the Serie Noire and as you can see it's the the background is black 
and it uses red er yellow lettering er and the series was founded by Marcel 
Duhamel his name is on 
your er er handout who was er an ex-member of the surrealist group in the 
nineteen-twenties and he was very er much linked to the surrealists throughout 
the twenties and the thirties and James Naremore in the book More than Night 
which i've already quoted from says that er er Duhamel was particularly er 
interested in er the researches into sexuality which the surrealists conducted 
er during the the twenties and early nineteen-thirties and in the American hard-
boiled er thriller what the surrealists saw as i've already mentioned was er 
this notion of eroticized crime whi-, su-, subverting as it were er the fabric 
of bourgeois society so that er one can see then the relationship er directed 
to the surrealists through the person of Duhamel er who then in forty-six 
begins the series of the Serie Noire and the Serie Noire published primar-, 
initially primarily American writers in translation and famously it always says 
underneath traduit de l'Americain translated from the 
American not from the English er even though sometimes some of the writers were 
British but er and also famously a number of French writers wrote for the Serie 
Noire under American pseudonyms er such was the the aura of so they pretended 
er to translate work into French from the American which in fact they had 
written into French in the first place but the the the basis of the Serie Noire 
was to to publish to translate and publish American writers and Duhamel 
encouraged also people like Chester Himes for example to to write for the 
series er Duhamel one finds also linked to the cinema er in two ways one is 
that he was he he appears in a number of films by Jean Renoir in the thirties 
as an actor and also he wri-, he wrote the preface to the book on film noir by 
Borde and Chaumeton fa-, book that's already been mentioned er several times er 
and i think i er also wanted to show you the the cover er and also the cover of 
another er Gallimard book to make the point that which i think is 
is very telling the design of that series is that the book combined the kind of 
sobriety of Gallimard publishing this is this was Gallimard very famous 
literary er imprint looks like this is er a copy of er a book by Marcel Proust 
but i could have picked up any they all look the same they have the this cream 
background and the red lettering and this this this design hasn't changed er 
throughout the century practically and there is that sense of classicism 
sobriety and what one sees here i think is is the a kind of mixture of that 
sobriety and classicism with the lurid colours of pulp fiction the black and 
the yellow er colours which tend to appear on a number of artefacts to to 
around crime and it this is er this is some press material for a film called Du 
Rififi Chez les Femmes which was er a kind of rip off as it were and and follow 
up to Rififi Chez les Hommes and you see that the black and white background 
and the and the lurid er yellow colour so er and the er the 
reason why er i'm talking about the er the Serie Noire writers er in relation 
to the films is is that they are on the one hand those indirect connections 
through Duhamel between surrealism er literary culture and the cinema but also 
because the three films we're talking about were directly based on or written 
by er writers from the Serie Noire and in particular you have it on your er 
handout er Albert Simonin er who wrote Touchez pas au Grisbi er and i have here 
the the book Touchez pas au Grisbi alas it's not an original Serie Noire it's a 
vulgar folio reprint of the late eight-, eighties but and you can see that on 
the cover what they've put is a a kind of er a graphic version of er Gabin 
Jeanne Moreau in the film er so that's the s-, sort of obvious er connection to 
the movie for the readers of the eighties er but er Simonin then wrote er 
Touchez pas au Grisbi in slang and er the the the book was adapted to the film 
that you've saw you've seen this morning and Auguste Le Breton 
wrote er Rififi and he wrote the dialogues of Bob le Flambeur which you will 
see this afternoon er after the lecture and the the importance of Le Breton of 
those writers in the fifties is shown by the fact that er Jean-Pierre Melville 
the director of Bob le Flambeur has er said that he used Le Breton as a 
marketing ploy that er at the time he made Bob le Flambeur in nineteen-fifty-
five fifty-six er he was not a well known director the film doesn't have a star 
unlike Grisbi which had Jean Gabin the star of Bob le Flambeur in nineteen-
fifty-six was Auguste Le Breton that's the name that sold the movie today of 
course er it's Jean-Pierre Melville's name which which is prominent but at the 
time er Melville recognized that he needed er Le Breton in order to er to sell 
his film and Le Breton wrote the dialogue er in the slang which was accustomed 
to er the writers of the Serie Noire in French okay just a word then about er 
language er and and that is that er tho-, those books 
were written in slang er in the argot that's the French word for slang er but 
you you'll come across it a number of times er which er was a a kind of 
romanticized version of crooks' slang er which has a long history er in in 
French language going back to the late Middle Ages er and which was revived in 
the nineteenth century by a number of classic writers like Victor Hugo but also 
er some of the writers of the popular novels which were the antecedents of the 
crime novels people like Eugène Sue his name is written on the er on the 
handout so that er that sla-, slang if you like had lo-, very er old history 
and and er distant origins in French language er and went through a number of 
revivals and in the post-war period went through a particularly dramatic 
revival through the writers of the of the Serie Noire and the importance of the 
slang er is is on is felt on many levels and it's it 
advertises itself immediately from the titles of the film so for the French 
audience of the mid-fifties words like grisbi er ha-, chnouf as in Razzia sur 
la Chnouf which means drugs er rififi and so on were words which were not er 
necessarily in everyday use but but had that aura of crim-, criminal language 
so that right from the title of the films the their er the nature of the 
literature on which the films were based and the criminal milieu which was 
evoked in the film was was made evident er and of course er if you if you don't 
speak French the er the kind of flavour of it er is lost and we we have to be 
reconciled to that but it is quite an important aspect of of the films the way 
in which the lines are spoken and the the words of slang er which are used and 
it's it's it was er very important to the film in a way which is made very self-
conscious in the films so i want to show you now two extracts before we er move 
on to er the the the the gangster 
films themselves er and especially Grisbi and Bob le Flambeur i want to show 
you an extract first of all from er a film with Eddie Constantine er and then 
an extract from Rififi so i know some of you i hope most of you have seen 
Rififi but er nevertheless we'll s-, we'll look at an extract so backtracking a 
little bit er on on on on the handouts still on the literary origins er you see 
that i make mention of American hard-, hard-boiled writers which i've already 
mentioned so people like Dashiell Hammett Raymond Chandler and so on all those 
writers who were translated into the Serie Noire but another one another writer 
who was translated and who may not be as meaningful to you today as Chandler 
and Hammett are was Peter Cheyney who wrote er a series of novels with a a 
private detective called Lemmy Caution er and a-, according to er Jill Forbes 
er the f-, the very first er book published by Serie Noire was a book 
called Poison Ivy by Cheyney er and that's it's er and it's the book which is 
adapted er into a film called La Môme Vert-de-Gris which would translate as 
The Vert-de-Gris Chick er sort of that that's the sort of flavour of it and 
which was a film wh-, the f-, wh-, the film which really made Eddie Constantine 
into a star and i'm going to show you a quick extract er now Eddie Constantine 
er was an American but who'd come to work in France he was a singer and he er 
was a protégé of e-, of the singer Edith Piaf I-E lover and she kind of 
helped his career initially and then er he started getting parts small parts in 
movies and with er La Môme Vert-de-Gris he became a major star through the the 
the mid-fifties and er through the fifties really and the i i will come to sa-, 
to talk talk later on about er the attitude to American culture in those films 
but the er interesting aspect of con-, Eddie Constantine and i pronounce him on 
on purpose as Constantine and not 
Constantine because he was known as Eddie Constantine in effect he became a 
French star and in fact after he made those movies er he tried to revive his 
career in America and and sort of didn't it didn't work so he was really a 
French star but a French star as an American and in those er movies of the mid-
fifties what he represented was the American which in the context of the film 
meant a man who was tall who was muscular athletic er who leaps and and er er 
leaps about er the frame who knocks people er out and so on and he's very often 
placed in contrast with French counterparts who tend to be older fatter less 
athletic and so on sort of if you think of Jean Gabin in Grisbi right and now 
you're going to see Eddie Constantine in La Môme Vert-de-Gris you see what i 
mean er so er this is a bit towards the end of the film where and i i there are 
no er subtitles i apologize for that but er it'll be quite obvious he's been 
caught by the gang of villains he's investigating and 
among those villains is the famous chick the la môme vert-de-gris the woman er 
and you will see that she does a kind of dramatic er turnaround and sort of 
comes onto his side but just watch for the er er just watch for er the 
movements his presence in the frame and if you speak a little bit of French 
just listen to his accent when he when he speaks 
nf0069: so that's him 
nf0069: okay er the we'll sto-, stop it here then then then there's a long 
pursuit on the on the roof er er can can you sorry eject this one and put the 
next one in thanks as you can i mean as you can see er i think compared to 
Grisbi this morning really there's a much 
more a lot more action er and there's er more than you see in this extract in 
the rest of the film er more physical action er and and the the his figure and 
and his er er body movements are very different from what you see in something 
like Grisbi and what you will see in Bob le Flambeur this afternoon er but what 
is also very obvious is the kind of er self-consciousness and the parody that 
that that perma-, p-, pervades the film and that's something which is i think 
er very er true of the genre in general but especially so of this Peter Cheyney 
adaptation it's already in the literature it's already in the books themselves 
but the way they play them the way Eddie Constantine er says his lines for 
example very much emphasizes this parodic element er and this self-
consciousness and that's the link to er the next extract from Rififi about the 
self-consciousness and also i wanted to show you that particular moment er well 
it's very nice anyway but also because er it er reveals the 
self-consciousness about the use of language and and slang it's towards the 
beginning of the film and it's the a scene in a cabaret with a a woman who is 
who sings er the the theme song Rififi er and in the the the words of the song 
talks about the word rififi itself okay so let's have a look 
nf0069: what's interesting er about this er well many things are interesting 
about this er extract but it's the importance that's given to crime as a 
spectacle er which is then er m-, what we see here is the perfect er mise-en-
abyme yes you know the expression mise-en-abyme a kind of repeated mirror image 
of something so that wha-, what we have here are for example the relationship 
between the gangster and the gangster moll that's all d-, signified by the 
words of the song but also signified by the silhouettes of the dancers er that 
we see er projected er and at the same time the importance of the language and 
the importance of er the c-, the criminal element are themselves made into a 
spectacle in 
the the song of the woman and a-, and also the dancers er mise-en-abyme in case 
you er it's comes a term that comes from heraldry which means that you know 
there's an image within an image within an image so that that moment really 
condenses a lot of what the rest of the film does er in the mode which is of 
course not er if you've s-, for those who've seen the whole film er that the 
mode is not the same throughout the film the film is much bleaker than this 
particular moment would suggest er er s-, particularly compared to Grisbi and 
Bob le Flambeur but nevertheless er i think that there is that that very 
interesting highlighting of the the the elements of the film and also the crim-,
of crime as a spectacle okay now er a few words er my point two on the handout 
about the place of the gangster films in the French film industry of the time 
er the films we're talking about were all very popular movies er at the box 
office er and hence and especially with Grisbi er Bob le Flambeur and Rififi er 
they're films which won prizes and which were popular at the box office and and 
that's one of the reasons why they started er a kind of a new wave of the genre 
of the policiers er in French cinema er but what's interesting about them with 
the exception of Bob le Flambeur which was very much an independent production 
is that films like Rififi like Grisbi were very much if you like in Hollywood 
terms there would be A productions in the sense of the directors were well 
known they're films with stars with large budgets with sets and so on for 
instance the sets of Rififi were designed by Alexander Trauner who Alexander 
Trauner who was er well known set designer er in fact from the er period of the 
the poetic realist films ver-, one of the best known set designers in French 
cinema er and so these are very much A productions g-, big 
productions but of course with quote unquote B subjects er and that itself gave 
rise to a lot of controversy at the time the fact that so much talent and money 
in in the view of some was was as it were quote unquote wasted on er 
unimportant trivial and immoral subjects so that er even in a French context 
where censorship was much less er intent on questions of morals of sexual 
sexual depiction and morality generally er there were controversies about these 
films er the fact that the criminals of course are presented sym-, er with 
sympathy er that that the spectator is is expected to identify wi-, with them 
you identify with Max and his friends and you identify with Bob and his friends 
in Bob le Flambeur er as you will see er have created controversy and er i know 
the the reason why the print of er Grisbi you saw this morning was incomplete 
er is that er was due to the British censor so the censorship was was worse on 
the British side of er as usual er in in relations to morality and 
and and sexuality and the scene i will show you er in a little while from gris-,
er from Grisbi is the scene y-, that that's missing but there were there are 
little bits which are missing and which are no doubt due to to censorship er 
and w-, one point i would i would plant here in your mind is that and and 
because i'll come back to it at the end of the lecture is er the fact that a 
star like Jean Gabin er er saw the renewal of his career in Grisbi er and 
shortly after this film in the late fifties and early sixties two of the 
biggest new stars of French cinema namely Jean-Paul Belmondo and Alain Delon 
began their careers also playing criminals or er or policemen sometimes but or 
g-, b-, y-, very often gangsters so that there is as it were in the mid-fifties 
to the early sixties a rise in French cinema of the male star as gangster as a 
criminal or a delinquent and and that's that's a very er interesting point and 
it contrasts quite sharply with what happened er before the 
war and and here you can make a direct comparison with Gabin because although 
in Pépé le Moko he played a gangster er in in his other films he tended to 
play er a worker maybe a worker driven to crime but to er a h-, a an honest 
working class hero and as we discussed even in Pépé he was portraying a kind 
of er honest working class character even though he's a gangster and with er 
when we move to the mid-fifties and early sixties we we see a change a very 
important change er in the way er major male stars begin to er be associated 
primarily with figures of gangsters er and the point i would make about the 
place of the films in the French film industry er was that they combined 
popular box office well they combined box office popularity with critical er 
acclaim in many cases and i think that we can then see them as a very important 
transitional er y-, cycle if you like between the tradition of quality and the 
new wave that's about to come and it's interesting that er 
most of these films certainly Grisbi and and certainly Rififi very much slot 
within the tradition of quality in terms as i say of stars budgets sets et 
cetera er yet the subjects are not typical quality subjects and er at the same 
time they are films which are approved of by the n-, the future new wave 
directors as critics and indeed when the new wave directors begin to make 
movies most of them er start by making er thrillers or films with delinquent 
characters and gangsters so think of Godard and A Bout de Souffle think of 
Truffaut and Shoot the Pianist er er es-, tho-, think of Chabrol er virtually 
all most of the new wave directors begin by making er thrillers so i think 
those films we're looking at this week are very important as a transitional 
point between tradition of quality and new wave er another er person i haven't 
mentioned here is Louis Malle who made Lift to the Scaffold Ascenseur Pour 
l'Echafaud in fifty-seven whi-, which is a thriller er okay so that that's i 
think the the the main point here about how these films are placed within the 
film industry and although some of the critics raise objections as i said about 
the morality of the films in particular Georges er interestingly er a critic on 
the left Georges Sadoul er who's a Communist critic er raised objections to 
Grisbi very much along the lines of what a pity that Jacques Becker with all 
his talent is making a thriller er now the next point i want to come to is er 
in a way the the the one of the most important points of about studying those 
films for us er at er in this course is the relationship between er French 
national identity and American cultural artefacts and cultura-, and American 
cinema and how that relationship is played out in the thrillers so er as you 
can see on your on your handout the first point i would make here is to 
contrast in these films and this is very much something i want us to discuss 
tomorrow in the seminar er er to look at the contrast 
or a-, at least the relationship between the iconography which one may say is a 
very much er a Hollywood iconography of the the gangsters er now Max and his 
friends in Grisbi don't wear trench coats but as you will see in Bob we do see 
trench coat the hats the guns er the sharp suits and so on er we have er the 
iconography that Colin McArthur talks about in ho-, er Underworld U-S-A is very 
much there er the cigarettes the drinks the well dressed people jukeboxes er 
jazz musicians er a lot of er artefacts and objects er that we associate or 
certainly at the time were associated with American culture litter these films 
so the way the the characters dress the locations they inhabit er think about 
the ubiquitous cabaret er wh-, which you've just seen in in Rififi you've seen 
that in in in Grisbi you will see it in Bob le Flambeur er music the role of 
music and and et cetera er very much connotes an American iconography and an 
iconography which people then could relate directly to 
American gangster films they could see and they'd been seeing since the 
thirties okay however at the same time er it's certainly in Grisbi and in er 
Bob le Flambeur interestingly differently in Rififi and i hope tomorrow 
there'll be enough people who've seen Rififi so we can discuss that in in 
detail er at the same time as we have this American iconography er which is 
very pervasive both visually and aurally we also have er a particular French 
type of mise en scène which we may recognize you may recognize already from 
films you've seen er in the last two weeks er a more mundane er er type of er 
delivery if you like of the story and more of an emphasis on the quotidian on 
er the temps mort the sort of dead time er a l-, a lot of the time when it 
doesn't seem that very much is happening er i used a quote which is from Roland 
Barthes' er text on on your han-, on the back of the handout which where he 
describes Grisbi in one of his rare look at looks at er a f-, a film at a 
French film as the world of understatement the sense that in the mise en scène 
in the way the characters er move in the way they they behave er between each 
other and so on er there's a sense of understatement of minimalism er we are 
not we're not even in the world of the Eddie Constantine movie with a lot of 
movement and jumping about and so on and knocking people on the on the on the 
head and so on er we're certainly not in in the world of the American gangster 
film we're in a sort of very different world a very hybrid world er i would 
argue between er the American gangster film and particular traditions of French 
er quote unquote realist depictions er and i would also use er here i think as 
as very er telling a quote by er François Truffaut who who wrote in his review 
of Grisbi what happens to the character is less important important than how it 
happens so what happens to the characters in Grisbi is less important than how 
it happens and 
therefore one one has this kind of understated mise en scène throughout the 
film which may seem actually surprising at as er at first indeed it's the first 
French gangster film one sees er it seems that not very much is happening li-, 
as in Pépé le Moko the heist the main criminal activity has already taken 
place it's off screen it's already happened we're in a kind of er the world in 
which they they're discussing and they're looking at the reactions the are you 
all right [laugh] the impact of of the crime but not the crime itself okay and 
here comes the m-, the little bit from Grisbi which you did not see this 
morning thanks to the British censor of the fifties [laughter] and that is when 
er Max takes his friend Riton to er his new flat you remember and they have 
this little scene which has become very famous actually er er of 
Max and Riton eating the pâté and drinking wine while Max is explaining to 
his friend about er er where he's gone wrong basically and if you remember at 
the end of that scene he says right okay well we're tired let's go to bed now 
and there's a cut to the scene in the bank where Max is taking the gold er 
bullion to to give it to his uncle the fence yes remember you're with me okay 
so this is what comes in between 
nf0069: oh okay we can st-, we can stop it there they just er we just see Max 
go er get up and go to the bank yeah so can you think of why this would have 
been deleted from the print [laugh] no any idea 
sm0072: well 'cause i've never been candidate so er because because staying 
together and all that kind of wouldn't say homosexual but homoerotic sort of 
bonding between 
nf0069: mm 
sm0072: kind of 
nf0069: yeah well i think that that's well that's 
apparently that was the reason that it was felt to be slightly shocking those 
two men putting on their pyjamas and and [laughter] er going to er bed although 
they go s-, separate beds er and but that the reason why i'm i'm i think it's 
well first of all it's important you see it so you've seen the complete movie 
almost although there are l-, odd little bits missing as well er is is really 
er the fact that it the film can do without it in terms of narrative it is not 
particularly important in relation to er the unfolding of of the story of 
Grisbi and in fact you can you can understand the film p-, perfectly well 
without it er yet one one could argue i would argue that it's also it's a key 
scene er in er in the film in emphasizing this mise en scène of er of the 
everyday of the quotidian these are two er and and of course er the-, these are 
two gangsters er but what 
we see them is doing their teeth and putting on their pyjamas and and er in a 
way which emphasizes er their lack of glamour although they wear very nice 
pyjamas but but nevertheless they they're kind of er just like middle-aged men 
going to bed and in fact are musing over the a-, the issue of ageing er and 
Truffaut said in his review of the film er that apart from saying what happens 
is less important than how it happens and this scene demonstrates that it's not 
what happens it's the how it's it's the relationship between these men which is 
the depicted purely in terms of everyday quotidian actions like going to do 
your teeth er but Truffaut er also said that this is a film about ageing it's 
about about turning fifty and so on and so forth and as you you've noticed what 
when you watched the film this morning it's got a lot of you know er remarks 
about er wanting to retire getting old being tired and so on and when Riton 
looks at his the bags under his eyes you 
recall that it refers to an earlier conversation where Max says you know look 
at yourself you know you should you should retire you know you've had enough er 
so that but but it it's it's very much that that sort of that sense of muted 
everyday action which is at the centre of the film and yet this is a gangster 
movie this is a film about gangsters and about criminals er so it seems seems 
to me to to emph-, to really focus on that hybrid between a French style of 
mise en scène and an American type of narrative and also iconography okay er 
two other points about er the the Franco-American er relationship in the film 
one is to do with the use of foreigners and foreignness in the films er that 
you will have noticed in Grisbi but this is true in Rififi and you will see 
that in Bob that er all the poli-, the French policiers of that period very 
much emphasize foreign characters er a-, among the French characters now er 
there's of course the Eddie 
Constantine film where he's clearly an American but in in the the the more 
typical g-, French gangster films of the mid and late fifties what we have is a 
lot of Italians and a lot of Corsicans now that refers to er there's there's 
the ref-, referential reality of er the Corsican Mafia which was an important 
part of the French underworld er and also with the Italians a kind of nod 
towards the American gangster film and references to the Italian er and 
Sicilian Mafia er but also one might want to see thi-, this emphasis on foreign 
characters er and and and look at how er they er behave in relation to the 
French ones er as another er displaced image of the relationship between France 
and America in the films er that the er the contrast between the behaviour of 
the French characters and the behaviour of the non-French characters is always 
to the advantage of the French ones er that the non-French characters tend to 
be the one who betray who are weak er et cetera so that what what what 
what one has there i think encapsulated is the way in which the films play very 
often on on a f-, on on one level on contrasting unfavourably the French 
characters they tend to be less good-looking er less slim less athletic and so 
on so on the surface there there's a kind of parody of of er particular att-, 
er French attitude yet at the same time the narrative resolution usually gives 
them the upper hand so there's a kind of interesting er play there on er 
national identity er and as i say one can read it as as a displacement of er 
Franco-American relationship er and er w-, as one goes towards the late fifties 
and the early sixties and we'll we'll see that er when we look at er Alphaville 
and talk about the new wave and the new wave attitude to the thriller er there 
there's there's a more overt er move towards imitating American characters er 
everybody knows about Jean-Paul Belmondo in A Bout de Souffle imitating Bogart 
there's a more kind of self-conscious er play on on 
Frenchness and non-Frenchness but in those mid-fifties gangster film it's the 
Italians and the Corsicans and also and the kind of Latin characters or er 
characters with perhaps not to you but to French people foreign sounding names 
like an-, Angelo for example and so on er at the same time note that all the 
main characters in the film the French characters have American sounding names 
so it's no accident that the heroes are called Max Bob Tony right in Rififi 
Tony le Stéphanois er in in Grisbi we have Max le Menteur and in er Bob we 
have Bob le Flambeur le flambeur means the gambler in in slang so that 
sm0073: 
nf0069: as if you y-, sorry 
sm0073: i thought it was somebody with the name Flambé [laughter] 
nf0069: well well flambé in slang means means er yes flambé means to burn but 
it's it means in slang it means to play to gamble er and er the you remember 
what i said about Pépé 
le Moko yes that pep-, in Pépé you have the the very French name Pépé very 
French sounding and le Moko evoked dark darkness er coffee strong coffee et 
cetera or the the exoticism of the character now think about that name and 
think of Max le Menteur Bob le Flambeur Tony er er but especially Max and Bob 
what we have there is a reversal we have the character s-, now have an American 
sounding name and the name that's attached to it is as it were redresses the 
balance to just show that they are French after all so Max le Menteur and Bob 
le Flambeur yeah so there's an interesting play on on the hero's name er and 
just a quick word er er on the use of music er in the films er and we'll come 
back to that er tomorrow in our discussion but the policiers er of the mid-
fifties the gangster films of the mid-fifties er herald the arrival of jazz 
music in mainstream French cinema now of course in French cinema in general in 
French culture jazz had arrived in in the nineteen-twenties 
in the wake of the First World War and was very popular but especially popular 
with an intellectual elite er and and that that that's quite clear er there's 
an enormous enthusiasm for jazz in France er but i-, restricted to a certain 
artistic intellectual milieu er what the policiers and er in the same way if 
you like as the er Serie Noire literature er broadens the audience for American 
literature to a very wide French public reading readership in the same way the 
films broaden the audience of jazz music to a very wide French er er set of 
viewers and er what what is very interesting to trace through the films is the 
er the way in which well the the the part the music plays and that's what i 
want to discuss with you tomorrow as well is look at how that jazz music plays 
but note that what the films do and that's why they were successful in in in a 
way broadcasting the jazz to to a wide audience was to propose there again a 
kind of hybrid which if you like you could call French jazz that what 
what you have is music that is clearly influenced by jazz music by American 
jazz music but is very often composed by French composers er and er the and the 
what we can measure the success they had by the fact that the the theme tune in 
both Grisbi and Rififi became er big hits in in the mid-fifties and er this is 
the sheet music for Grisbi er er and apparently the film started a mini craze 
for harmonica er music er at at the time er thanks to the success of the er of 
the theme tune Grisbi which you remember is Max's tune the f-, one of the first 
things he says is i'm going to put my tune on er yeah remember er and think 
about when you see Bob er er in a in a little while think about the the role 
that that music plays er in setting that hybrid mood between Frenchness and 
Americanness er aurally in a s-, and and how that interacts with the way the 
mise en scène and the narrative work er visually so er and the the l-, 
i want to finish er with er the last point on the on your er handout which is 
er to to offer two er not contrasting but interlocking symptomatic readings of 
these films er many people have thought about the success of those American 
gangster films er er sorry French gangster films of the mid-fifties er and er 
sought to understand their popularity and why at that particular moment in time 
er given that there had been crime films before there had been gangster films 
before you know about Pépé le Moko you've seen Quai des Orfèvres and so on 
why it was at that moment in the mid-fifties that er this particular cycle of 
Grisbi Rififi Bob and and a few others you've got on the sheet why these at 
that particular moment these worked so well and were so successful and and 
started er what what what became in fact er the second major genre of French 
cinema after comedy er so two possible er readings i will highlight now and er 
for you to think about while you watch Bob one is to do with er the 
argument you've heard last week in relation to Quai des Orfèvres er to some 
extent is that one could read these films as a displacement er of issues to do 
with the war and the German occupation of France er this is the a reading 
proposed by people like Robin Buss er Jean-Pierre Melville himself when he 
talks about Bob le Flambeur very much proposes this particular reading of er 
Bob le Flambeur and and his other gangster film as films which are in in effect 
talking about the German occupation about the resistance about the war in 
France and w-, one could read them as er a nostalgic revisiting of the war and 
also a nostalgic hankering after the prewar period er this is something which i-
, incidentally is very explicit in a a British film which i i've put on your 
related viewing list called League of Gentlemen er it's a very different film 
er but er there the r-, the er nostalgia for the war is incredibly explicit 
here i would just say two things er that 
w-, might help us understand er or at least er see whether one can back up this 
particular reading of a film one would be the emphasis on old men on men on the 
edge of retirement men who've who've had enough who've seen all the battles 
who've been through it all and what one could read that as men who've been 
through the war er and so on but also who are there's constant emphasis in in 
in those films about how er the the underground world is not what it used to be 
that it was better before that there was a real code of honour among among the 
the gangsters and you know that Grisbi in English is called Honour Among 
Thieves er and er the other thing is that there are moments in those films 
where the iconography e-, evokes er the resistance evokes er i mean there are 
scenes in cellars er evokes literally underground activities er with the er the 
resi-, to do with the resistance er there are characters tortured or whom we 
see in a position er tied up as if they were about to be tortured 
or had been tortured and and the-, these evoke very very sort of strong images 
of the resistance er and resistance l-, er linked activities okay so that's one 
type of reading and and there's a lot of course these films are totally to do 
with honour loyalty and betrayal and of course loyalty and betrayal are are are 
kind of values which one c-, one can associate with what happened in the 
underground resistance against the the German ge-, in the during the German 
occupation er okay so that that's one way so it would be a symptomatic 
displaced reading the second one is which is proposed by people like Jill 
Forbes er and and er and a couple of others is to read these films as a mirror 
quote unquote of contemporary French society a society which was er moving 
towards modernity which was being quote unquote Americanized er in in terms of 
er consumer goods in terms of of culture er and a culture of consumption that 
er France in the nineteen-fifties is er moving out of of of the post-war 
er recession and and is is a country being rebuilt we're on almost we're three 
years away from General de Gaulle's Fifth Republic and and the real 
modernization of France it's the beginning of what er historians called call er 
les trentes glorieuses which er means er lit-, means literally the three the 
thirty glorious years meaning the forties er er well from the mid-forties to 
the mid er to the late sixties and and seventies the thirty years of economic 
boom and the rise of the consumer society er France in the fifties then is is 
beginning to be in the grips of consumer society er of er increased wealth of 
economic boom and one could read then the gangsters as being about er a 
community which used to be the working class community of the thirties poetic 
realist films er of community of workers of producers who've become a community 
of consumers and consumers who are motivated by individual er gain and er and 
greed and 
so if you like one can then read the gangsters as symptomatic of French society 
at large er and it's er er desire for consumption er think about how the films 
are littered with images of conspicuous consumption of wealth of high living 
living of er er people drinking champagne or whisky in cabarets and er driving 
huge cars sometimes American cars and kind of desiring the objects which are er 
in for the French linked then to modernity and in the f-, in the context of 
France in the fifties that means to America so that the and the g-, the we see 
the gangsters if you like in the grips of desire for a trilogy which the trilo-,
the the which the the gangster film er very much focused on which is of money 
er consumer goods and women er and g-, and among those consumer goods cars 
figure very importantly so that and think about the way the gangsters are now 
very much seen as professionals as organized it's we're we're moving towards 
the idea of organized crime as the bi-, as a business er 
and that in the context of France in the fifties er the idea of organized 
business would again connote America er rather than than France er one of the 
key novels of France in the sixties was a novel called Les Choses er which 
means er things by Georges Perec er and er it was it was published in sixty-
three but it's very much about French society in the fifties and early sixties 
er er it's a sort of parody of a young couple totally whose life is totally 
dominated by things goods objects objects that they desire and then one can 
read the gangsters as er a figuration if you like of that desire for for 
objects for things er for er capital er for er for gain and and consumer goods 
and and again i go and here i would go back just to finish to the point i made 
about the new stars of French cinema er the renewal of Gabin's er er stardom 
and the the the new 
stardom of Jean-Paul Belmondo and Alain Delon as perhaps an image of that er 
mirroring of French society okay now we can discuss tomorrow whether you agree 
with er one of those two readings or or you think both can be read er 
concurrently er and er we will i will just my last word would be to say that er 
the figuring of the this hybrid culture between France and America is for you 
to to bear that in mind and sort of carry it through the course and see how 
when we arrive to a film like Lion that hybridization of French and cul-, and 
American culture is so different and whereas here we have a utopia of American 
goods when we come to Lion we have a complete dystopia of of what American 
culture means so i'll just er finish on end on this i'm sorry we're just a few 
minutes late but we did start late er so we'll have er a mini break now and 
we'll start the er the video of Bob le Flambeur okay remember there isn't a 
print so that's why you're seeing the tape okay