Melodie En Sous-Sol = the Big Snatch (Cinemascope Print)

An ex-con sets up one last job and enlists the help of a younger crook to rob the Casino at Cannes. Everything goes according to plan, right up to the last minute until … A very standard caper film which gives one more opportunity to the trio Verneuil-Gabin-Audiard to send up the gangster genre with razor-sharp one-liners. Like his illustrious predecessors Henri Jeanson and Jacques Prevert, Audiard mixed classic French and slang and delighted in derision and ‘bons mots’, though his dialogue was coarser (a sign of the times) and more schocking. (…) Audiard’s witty, hard-hitting dialogue underpins much of the best popular French cinema from the late 1950s to the mid-1980s, notably his collaborations with Jean Gabin, for whom he wrote tailor-made dialogue.” Reference: Ginette Vincendeau. The companion to French cinema. BFI Publishing, 1996.

Credits: Producer, Jacques Juranville ; director, Henri Verneuil ; writers, Albert Simonin, Michel Audiard ; photography, Louis Page ; music, Michel Magne.
Cast: Jean Gabin, Alain Delon, Maurice Biraud, Viviane Romance, Henri Virlojeux, Germaine Montero, Jean Carmet, Dora Doll.