Un flic
Jean-Pierre Melville
A hold up in a bank, one of the gangsters is wounded. The money is buried in a field, the wounded man taken to a clinic. Meanwhile, Edouard Coleman, a young police commissaire, is investigating the criminal world. He finds his friend Simon, a night club owner, and his girlfriend Cathy, who Coleman is also in love with. But Simon is also a thief and drug trafficker, selling on the drugs through his accomplice Louis...
With : Alain Delon, Catherine Deneuve, Richard Crenna, Riccardo Cucciolla
Screenplay : Jean-Pierre Melville
Image : Walter Wottitz
Sound : André Hervée
Editing : Patricia Nény
Decors : Théo Meurisse
Screenplay : Jean-Pierre Melville
Image : Walter Wottitz
Sound : André Hervée
Editing : Patricia Nény
Decors : Théo Meurisse
Production : Corona, Oceanic, Euro Film
Distribution: Tamasa Distribution
Distribution: Tamasa Distribution
Following the success of Le Cercle rouge (The Red Circle), Melville was determined to make an adaptation of Arsène Lupin. But he died suddenly, shortly after the release of Un Flic (Dirty Money). Given a rough ride by the critics (Chabrol qualified the film as a detective film "where nobody moves") and shunned by audiences, the film has been reapraised since. "Ambiguity and derision, the only two feelings that a detective film has never been inspired with, are depicted against the backdrop of a nostalgic piano tune, with a gallery of characters who are hounded, disenchanted, at the end of their tethers, all of them wearing, with varying degrees of dissimulation, the universal mask of death... With Un flic, Melville penetrates even deeper – although this was thought to be impossible – into this secret, underground, lyrical, unreal world he had pieced together over the previous 20 years" (P. Labro).