Monsieur Gangster Blu-ray Review
The Goduncle.
Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, March 5, 2013
Lino Ventura was an Italian born actor who became a major French movie star. Rather bulky and not especially
photogenic (he has an odd resemblance to American comedian Danny Thomas), Ventura was one of those "accidental"
actors who kind of stumbled into films through no fault of his own (so to speak) and found a rather lucrative career just
sitting there waiting for him. Due to his hardboiled appearance and hefty physique, Ventura often found himself playing
gangsters, and in a number of films he was co-starred with Jean Gabin, one of the most iconic French actors of all time
and a man who became a personal friend to Ventura. Someone at Olive Films might be a Ventura fan of sorts, for the
label has brought out a number of Ventura offerings on Blu-ray over the past several months, titles like
Greed in the Sun,
Taxi for Tobruk and most recently
The Great Spy Chase.
(There's also an excellent Criterion release of another Ventura film,
Army of Shadows, available on Blu-ray.) All of these films help to show
Ventura's considerable range, with
Monsieur Gangster probably falling closer to
The Great Spy Chase in
general terms even if it doesn't share the same kind of buffoonish qualities or cartoon like ambience. This similarity
might be due to the fact that
Monsieur Gangster, which predated
The Great Spy Chase by one year, features quite a few of the same
cast and crew, notably director Georges Lautner and co-writer Michel Audiard. (Audiard also provided dialogue for
Greed in the Sun,
A Taxi for Tobruk and
The Great Spy Chase, proving a versatility similar to
Ventura's.) While there are the same farcical elements in
Monsieur Gangster as there are in
The Great Spy
Chase, this earlier film is much more of a "fish out of water" offering which posits Ventura as a onetime hood who
has gone straight (more or less), only to find himself sucked back into a life of crime due (much like Ventura's film career)
to no fault of his own.
We first meet Fernand Naudin (Lino Ventura) at a job site where he manages some heavy equipment operators. We
get a
little hint of the often wry humor in this piece when he talks to one of his subordinates about a piece of equipment
which
has just broken down. The subordinate asks him just what piece has broken down, to which Fernand replies, "The
breakdown truck". We're off and running in world where Murphy's Law runs rampant and poor Fernand is caught in an
ever increasing maelstrom of unexpected situations.
Fernand is whisked away to the death bed of an old "associate" of his, the somewhat humorously named The Mexican
(Jacques Dumesnil), who has become a mob boss. The Mexican is distraught over any number of issues, not necessarily
so much about his mortality as what will be left in the wake of his demise. The Mexican is most concerned about his
daughter Patricia, whom he fears will become a woman of loose morals since she already appears to be a girl who "just
wants to have fun" (to kind of quote a certain pop singer). The Mexican insists that Fernand become Patricia's
guardian,
something that shocks Fernand. Fernand is even
more shocked when he discovers that The Mexican also wants
Fernand to take over the "family business".
The rest of
Monsieur Gangster plays out as a fairly amiable comedy of manners where Fernand has to deal with
the jealous underlings of The Mexican who resent this interloper taking what they perceive to be their rightful place, as
well as Fernand's attempts to come to terms with his own version of the generation gap with his new charge Patricia
(Sabine Senjin). In one of the film's smarter decisions, Patricia is
not a potential romantic partner for Fernand
(though things
seem to be headed in that direction, at least initially), and in fact some of the film's more pointed
humor comes from Fernand having to deal with Patricia's unctuously arty boyfriend Antoine (Claude Rich). There are
two simultaneously unfolding tracks of humor here, therefore, one dealing with Fernand and his fellow crooks, and
another where "Uncle" Fernand attempts to deal with Patricia and everything being in charge of a teenager entails.
There's a peculiar quality to
Monsieur Gangster that may prevent it from being fully appreciated by an American
audience. I once spoke French rather fluently, and still have a probably better than average understanding of colloquial
conversational French, and there's a rhythm and grittiness to Michel Audiard's dialogue that isn't fully conveyed in the
English translations.
Some of the pointed quality comes through (there's a great line where Antoine tells
Fernand to use his bourgeoisie opinions about modern art for suppositories), but this is definitely a film where
something, perhaps something quite important, is "lost in translation".
As I mentioned in the
The
Great Spy Chase Blu-ray review, it's at least a little odd that a dialogue writer of such piquancy was utilized in a
film which really didn't need much dialogue to begin with. Quite the opposite is true with regard to
Monsieur
Gangster. This is a film filled to the brim with bristling little interchanges, and if
everything doesn't make to
the subtitles effectively, there's still enough snark and gentle poking and prodding to make Audiard's effervescent
vinegar qualities quite apparent.
Monsieur Gangster is a film that met with critical apathy at the time of its initial release, but which gained a
certain cachet in the decades since due to repeated broadcasts and, ultimately, home video releases. Audiard and
Lautner are obviously film lovers themselves, and it took viewers a while to catch on to at least a couple of homages to
other films sprinkled into the mix. There's a justly renowned scene with the thugs sitting around a table which owes a
tip of the hat (and/or glass) to
Key Largo, and late in the film, some may think they've wandered into a Jacques
Tati
film and that M. Hulot has wandered into the frame. That's actually a tip of the
eyeglass to another Lautner
creation from his
Monocle films.
Monsieur Gangster Blu-ray, Video Quality
Monsieur Gangster is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Olive Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.66:1.
While the elements here are in generally good safe, there are several outright strange anomalies scattered throughout this
presentation which boil down to what almost looks like
tinting, believe it or not. For just a second here or a second
there, the registration changes markedly, sometimes with a bluish tint (look at the last screenshot, which is admittedly
awash in optical artifacts since it's part of the credits sequence, but which is
markedly darker than just the frame
before this one), at other times with an almost sepia tone. If you don't mind this admittedly minor and transitory
anomalies, the rest of this high definition presentation looks quite good. Contrast, aside from the issues noted above, is
consistent and quite strong, and fine detail is at very pleasing levels, especially in the close-ups.
