A FORERUNNER OF Jean-Pierre Melville's Bob le flambeur and Jules Dassin's Rififi – often considered the twin quintessences of 1950s French gangster films – Jacques Becker's 1954 Touchez pas au grisbi (Don't touch the loot) now seems both entirely period specific and utterly out of time. It may look like a hard-boiled Hollywood crime flick from the 1940s – a mood further endorsed by star Jean Gabin's passing resemblance to (a far more suave) William Bendix – but its ineffably European population of aging crooks, dapper dope kings, and razor-hearted showgirls conveys a sense of Old World soul-decay and frankly addressed sexuality through which any of Fassbinder's family of ghouls might comfortably have sashayed. "She might find the john of her life tonight," the film's weary moral fulcrum, an impeccably dressed thief named Max (Gabin), at one point admits of his ostensible date for the evening, a peroxide gold digger he's about to cut loose. "Who am I to stand in the way of her career?"

Indeed, the middle-aged Max – who, along with his partner of 20 years, Riton (René Dary), has recently pulled off a gold heist meant to secure his retirement from a life of crime – is concerned with the careers of most everyone he meets, so long as their interests don't conflict with his own. A calming influence among crooks and cheats, Max floats through the film's alternately well-appointed and desolate locations – a private bistro for tastefully dressed criminals, a lonely and eventually blood-soaked road on an ink-black night – finding lucrative gigs for his friends and grabbing an occasional fistful of some appreciative damsel's ample breasts. Adored by women about whom he cares little or nothing, and admired for his loyalty even among those who are about to betray him, Max is both known to everyone and a mystery to all. "You're a funny man," remarks an American in Paris named Betty on whom Max has just paid a late-night booty call. "Deep down, I really don't know who you are at all."

"That bothers you, huh?" Max responds with a smile, checking his watch and heading for the door.

What bothers Max is the predicament the one person to whom he's been most loyal, Riton – whose foppish exterior (pencil mustache, greasy mop of tightly permed curls) is contradicted by the encroachments of age on vanity that are clearly eating him from within – has gotten him into. Riton has spilled the beans about the gold heist to his two-timing girlfriend, Josy (Jeanne Moreau); she, in turn, has spilled the beans to her lover, Angelo (iconic heavy Lino Ventura), who's eager to put the touchez on Max's carefully stashed grisbi. When Riton haplessly allows himself to be kidnapped by Angelo, Max is sent into a bitter free fall of self-recrimination and resentment toward his old friend – "the sucker" he's allowed himself to be tied to for 20 years – that's delivered as a lacerating interior monologue that underscores the affinities between serie noire novelist Albert Simonin (on whose award-winning novel the film is based and who wrote its dialogue) and American pulp laureate Jim Thompson. "Every hair on his head ended up costing me," Max seethes over the abducted Riton, as vanity-bruised as if he'd been backstabbed by a double-crossing moll.

Becker began his filmmaking career as an assistant to Jean Renoir in the early 1930s, and he worked closely with his mentor on many of Renoir's greatest films, including Grand Illusion – another classic of male vanity storm-tossed by fortune and fate. Renoir later wrote of his relationship with Becker at the time, "During the making of Grand Illusion, we decided to live together. The affection between us went far beyond the bounds of normal friendship, so much so indeed that had it not been for our physical aspect, ill-intentioned minds might have suspected a relationship of quite another kind. And why not? I am a firm believer in loving friendships in which there is no sexual element."