Le Rouge est mis (1957)
Directed by Gilles Grangier

Film Review

Jean Gabin and Lino Ventura are reunited for the fourth time in as many years in this pretty conventional 1950s French crime-thriller.  The film was based on a novel by the popular série noir writer Auguste Le Breton, whose works were frequently adapated for French cinema.  The characters, the scenario and the dialogue are all familiar stuff, film noir by numbers, but it was a very popular formula at the time. Gabin impresses once again as the tough hoodlum with an all-too-convincing veneer of respectability.

Film Synopsis

Seemingly a law-abiding garage owner, Louis Bertain is in fact the leader of a ruthless gang of crooks that includes Frédo, Pépito and Raymond.  The gang's nefarious activities are untroubled until the fateful day when Louis's younger brother Pierre is released from prison and returns to the city to look up his old mistress Hélène.  Superintendent Pluvier's attempts to coerce Pierre into informing on his brother's criminal activities come to nothing, but he bides his time, knowing that sooner or later Louis will make a fatal error.  Louis offers Pierre work in his garage, providing he agrees never to see Hélène again.  It is a promise that the younger man is quick to offer but has no intention of keeping. 

One evening, Pierre overhears his brother organising his next hold-up with Pépito.  The robbery, of an armoured van carrying 15 million francs, proceeds as planned but it suddenly goes spectacularly wrong.  In the ensuing confusion, Raymond is killed and Pépito is forced to shoot dead the couriers and two motorcycle cops who give chase afterwards.  When the police come to arrest Louis, Pépito convinces himself that they have been betrayed by Pierre.  Seething with anger, he sets off in pursuit of the younger brother to inflict on him a just punishment.  Little does he know that the real culprit has already handed himself over to the police...