In Touchez pas au grisbi (1954), Jean Gabin played Max, an ageing Parisian gangster who, after a successful gold heist, tries to retire quietly, only to find that old friends, new rivals and his own loyalty will not let him go. Directed by Jacques Becker, the film revived Gabin’s career and created the modern French gangster film.
Max is tired, honourable and dangerous, and Gabin plays him with a grizzled authority that audiences had not seen from him before. The film’s night-time Paris, its slang and its code of friendship became hugely influential, and Gabin, now in his fifties, emerged as the elder statesman of French cinema, a man whose past gave every gesture weight.