Pasha (1968)

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Fresh and Exciting

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

This was number 84 out of the 95 films that Jean Gabin appeared in over his long career. He still had both The Sicilian Clan and Le Chat ahead of him, with Le Chat being superior to both this entry and The Sicilian Clan but nevertheless this is a half-decent heist movie which has Gabin's flic, Inspector Joss, out to avenge a colleague whom, it turns out, was on the pad anyway. There's a nice line in ruthless heavies in the quaintly named Quinquin (pronounced Can Can) and a couple of good set-piece heists which crank up the interest and though it lacks both the Class and Style of Gabin's come-back movie Touchez-pas au grisbi it's far from chopped liver.

It's probably the movie I have the most seen in my entire life. The first time was in 1972, a Sunday evening, on the first channel. I was only nine years old, and was astonished at this time. Since then, I have never missed any of the airing of this french masterpiece. First, the armored truck heist of the beginning, somewhere in the north of France countryside, with the Serge Gainsbourg soundtrack (Requiem pour un con)is absolutely terrific. I consider it as the most outstanding armored truck attack of the whole crime movie industry. And I am a specialist for this kind of topic - see my other comments. I guess many other film makers were inspired by this sequence. Olivuer Marchall, for 36, Quai des Orfèvres, confessed he was. And Andre Pousse, as Quinquin, the ruthless killer, is also here brilliant at the most. I say he gives in this feature his best performance ever. Unforgettable. When he kills Dany Carrel, It's so good, because you don't expect this. Or this other scene, just after he has killed on of his accomplices with his wife, he quietly checks the horse race tickets while looking for the results on the TV. And concerning one point which has not been told about by the other users, is the police settings. We see a very modern police headquarters, with computers, and the film was made in 1968...Even three decades later, the Quai des Orfèvres - the actual french police headquarters - so know all around the world - was not like this. So nothing is really realistic in this film. Nothing to do with the new french crime movies à la Olivier Marchall. I won't talk about the Alpine Renault used by the police officer, with Jean Gabin sitting in it !!!Yes folks, this is a must see film for those who have missed it.

While the story is pretty run-of-the-mill detective stuff, there are some bits of cinematography that I found stunning: Léon's car sinking in the pond while Brigitte Bardot sings "Harley Davidson", the odd meeting between Quinquin and Nathalie in the very cool JNS3 shop, Quinquin's elimination of his co-conspirators at the farm, the details of the original heist that starts everything off. The police offices are surreally cool and modern, stuffed with (for the time) ultra-high technology.It's really not Gabin's best performance by a long shot; another reviewer amusingly mentions him "waddling in." He seems tired and like he's just phoning it in. I disagreed that Dany Carrel couldn't act; I thought she was pretty good (and really beautiful). André Pousse (Quinquin) was very effective as a ruthless murderer.It was fun to see Gainsbourg and his nicotine-stained fingers in the studio. The music was used to pretty good effect through the movie -- perhaps most strikingly, as I noted above, when Quinquin takes care of Léon at the pond. Two touches that amused me: Gabin's character was named Joss, which presages Joss Beaumont in Le Professional (1981), another Lautner/Audiard collaboration. More subtle: the railway station chief at Troyes speaks with a pronounced stutter; Troyes is best known for the coronation of Louis the Stammerer in 878.I also got a kick out of it since it was filmed the year I was born, and the world then looks so different from the way it does now.

and the plot may seem familiar from a dozen other crime/thriller movies you have seen, but the character is played by an aging Jean Gabin, who does one of his best performances I can recall. The film depicts well Paris night-life, and the dangerous links between clubs, girls, racketeers, and the Police, in a realistic approach to mid-1960's life.