The Burglars [Le Casse] *** (1971, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Omar Sharif, Dyan Cannon, Robert Hossein, Nicole Callan, Renato Salvatori) – Classic Movie Review 4,678

The 1971 French neo noir crime film The Burglars [Le Casse] sees four burglars (Jean-Paul Belmondo, Robert Hossein, Renato Salvatori, Nicole Calfan) carry out an emerald heist and then chased by a corrupt Greek police detective (Omar Sharif) in Athens. 

Director Henri Verneuil’s very entertaining 1971 French-Italian neo noir crime film The Burglars [Le Casse] stars Jean-Paul Belmondo and Omar Sharif, and is a remake of the 1957 film The Burglar with Dan Duryea and Jayne Mansfield. In a story based on the 1953 novel The Burglar by David Goodis, four burglars carry out an emerald heist and then are chased by a corrupt Greek police inspector in Athens.

Four professional burglars – Azad (Jean-Paul Belmondo), Ralph (Robert Hossein), Renzi (Renato Salvatori) and Helene (Nicole Calfan) – carry out a daring, complex emerald heist from a safe at the home of rich Greek gem merchant Mr Tasco (José Luis de Vilallonga) in Athens while he is away on vacation. But a Greek police detective, Abel Zacharia (Omar Sharif), spots the burglars’ car parked and unlocked outside the house at night. Azad thinks he has seen the detective off by telling him he is a toy salesman with engine trouble. But has he?

Then later the utterly dedicated, devoted and dogged but corrupt and sadistic Zacharia reappears, planning to find and keep the emeralds, and he relentlessly pursues the four burglars, playing cat and mouse with Azad, while the crooks try to leave Greece on a merchant ship. Meanwhile Azad falls in love with Lena, a sleazy woman crook (Dyan Cannon) he meets and flirts with at a bar.

Lavish locations incredibly nicely and imaginatively shot by cinematographer Claude Renoir, another extremely lively, bouncy and catchy Ennio Morricone score, the bright star performances of Belmondo and Sharif, and Henri Verneuil’s busy, detailed, exciting direction all combine to distract the attention big time from the considerable brain-in-neutral action thriller vacuity of the enterprise. Some of the extended pauses for action or lectures about Greek food are completely pointless, just there because they know can do them, and have fun doing them.

In fact it is all distraction. The thriller is there, but it takes back seat to playing around. It is all very stylish, kitsch and campy, a Sixties-style straggler, but there is a really good, dark noir story here, and they don’t treat it nearly seriously enough. Nevertheless, when the thriller is allowed to kick in, it kicks in quite hard. Belmondo is good, turning on the sly charm and performing amazing, acrobatic stunts, but Sharif sneakily steals the show, in a convincing, really nasty portrait of devious corruption, greed and evil. The film concludes not that the cops are as bad as the robbers, but much, much worse. At least, the awkward idea seems to be that French robbers are better than Greek cops.

It is such a shame that Verneuil ignores any weight or darkness in Goodis’s noir novel and goes for fast-paced action and facile thrills instead. And it is a pity that there is not more real quality on show and that there is so obviously a classier film trying to get out here.

However, as Seventies Euro action thrillers go, the movie is not at all bad anyway, actually very entertaining, especially as it includes the spectacular action of an extremely notable car chase through the streets of Athens, another chase with Belmondo hanging off the side of local buses, a long fisticuff fight with Helene’s new lover, and Belmondo’s fall from a construction truck down a steep, rocky hillside. And the bones of Goodis’s novel are still there to prop it up.

The cast shot the film twice, in French and in English.

It is fascinating to compare it with the original 1957 US version The Burglar, as well as François Truffaut’s 1960 film Shoot the Pianist (Tirez sur le Pianiste, Shoot the Piano Player), based on David Goodis’s 1956 novel Down There.

Goodis is credited as writing the screenplay for The Burglar, his only solely authored screenplay produced as a movie.

His big break came in 1946 when his novel Dark Passage was serialised in The Saturday Evening Post and filmed as Dark Passage (1947) with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. His other big break came when he co-wrote the screenplay of The Unfaithful (1947), released shortly before Dark Passage.

The cast are Jean-Paul Belmondo as Azad, Omar Sharif as Abel Zacharia, Dyan Cannon as Lena Gripp’s, Robert Hossein as Ralph, Nicole Calfan as Helene, Renato Salvatori as Renzi, José Luis de Vilallonga as Tasco, Myriam Feune de Colombi [Myriam Colombi] as Isabelle Tasco, and Raoul Delfosse as Le gardien de la villa Tasco.

Le Casse in French translates as The Heist.

Some may remember Renato Salvatori in Rocco and His Brothers.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 4,678

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