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A double cross becomes a triple cross as thieves pull of two daring heists as the police chief follows hot on their trail in this classic vintage crime film from director Jean-Pierre Melville.

Four men set out on a bank heist, masterminded by Simon, a nightclub owner. One is shot. The three left set out to complete their ultimate plan: Use the bank heist cash to fund a deadly second heist, where they would steal drugs from a runner carrying it on a train.

Things seem to go well - at first. Hot on their trail is an arrogant, brutal Paris policeman, played by Alain Delon, who is sleeping with the ringleader’s mistress, Cathy. The cop is determined to nail the ringleader, a night club

owner who is his friend. He will stop at nothing to do so.

Throughout, I was rooting for the crooks to outwit the cop. I really did not like the character played by Alain Delon. He was too cocky for my taste, but I guess having a car phone and a swagger to boot would do that to a guy. (Seriously, he had a car phone. It was a wheel phone mounted to the passenger side wall.)

Dirty Money is a very slow starter compared to today’s standards, but it was rapid-fire for a police drama in the 1970s. Of course during this time audiences were being seduced by Bond, and that kind of action-packed mayhem turned audiences into the thrill-seekers we are today. I think they could have easily axed 20 minutes of the film to get to the real meat of the story - the second, more deadly, heist.

This film reminded me a bit of the modern-day The Italian Job - which was nothing like the original (thank God). You had a gang ready to heist - all in on the job for their own reasons. There wasn’t a lot of development into that why, but factiods sprinkled throughout so viewers realized that not all of them were doing it because they were bad boys.

I enjoy watching the forensics of the day, seeing just how simplistic it was compared to today’s influx of computer jazz that sometimes because overwhelming - and overused. They may not have had all the fancy PCs to run DNA then, but cops did have to use their brains, and that means movies from nearly four decades ago had to have solid scripts. I LOVED the simplicity with which Richard Crenna’s character, Simon, used a large magnet to unlock a train door. Brilliant. No noise. Easily hidden. Wonderful. The scene where the crooks use a small hook attached to the helicopter to lift Crenna and the drugs off the train was drawn out, but meticulous. It didn’t have those moments of, Will he or won’t he make it? You knew he would. It showed in detail what was happening. We could have done without a few of the details, but it was still a great segment.

There are several silent scenes in the film, where director Jean-Pierre Melville allowed the film to tell the story, rather than dialog. It was great in some places - like the scene with the police chief, the night club owner and the woman sleeping with them both. The looks exchanged between the actors spoke volumes. Today’s stars could take a lesson in just a look to tell so much.

Fans of Hitchcock will appreciate the use of model trains and helicopters used during the second heist, where one of the robbers must drop from the chopper onto the movie train to steal the drugs. Younger audiences who are slaves to CGI may not appreciate the talent and time it took to do these types of special effects. This was before George Lucas’ amazing Star Wars effects, and directors used what they could. It is the extra stuff - camera angles, use of smoke or fog, backgrounds - that make these scenes work. That took some creativity and talent that computers simply do not provide.

Richard Crenna was incredibly handsome in his day. It was very cool to see him in a French-speaking film. Catherine Deneuve, always the beauty, played the wonderful double-crossing vixen Cathy. She was so beautiful - naturally so. It always surprises me to see a woman with natural glamor. I’ve become too used to the plastic of today’s Tinsel Town tops. With just a look, she conveyed, lust, uncertainty, pain.

Melville was known for using silence like a good designer uses white space effectively. Dirty Money was his final film, and certainly a fitting end to the director’s career.

Despite the subtitles and slow pacing, I really liked this film. The acting and direction made it worth the watch for this vintage film fan. Dirty Money is a little long at 98 minutes, but epitomizes the genre in the early 1970s.

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