Touchez Pas Au Grisbi (director Jacques Becker, 1954) is a consumate French classic, and if you’re looking for something different, a new angle on the gangster genre, then you are implored to check it out.  Touchez Pas Au Grisbi has a great story, superior performances, largely from Jean Gabin, but most essentially it plays against a great backdrop of thugs, prostitutes and other underworld characters — here shot in many genuinely seedy settings in and around Montmartre.  A good gangster film always demands this kind of background colour, and Grisbi has it all.  Merd Alors, it’s 60 years old but it is as burning hot as any turd Tarantino might turn out! I promise you'll love it.

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Underground Torture in Grisbi

Gangsters in Pyjamas

It’s not all tough though — far from it.  You can’t watch Touchez Pas Au Grisbi, for example, without being moved by the gangsters in pyjamas scene.  After stating in no uncertain terms that the nightclub life is boring, and that he much prefers to be at home, it is still a surprise to watch an extended and largely silent scene in which Jean Gabin hides out with his old friend Riton (Remy Dary), and the two of them get dressed for bed.  

Jean Gabin

René Dary - wearing the finest moustache in French cinematic history

Jeanne Moreau

Fans are recommended to visit The Musée Jean Gabin in his native town, Mériel.  In fact, given that the James Dean Museum is now closed, Jean Gabin is apparently the only (non-cowboy) movie star in the world with his own museum.  There’s accolade for you!