Released in 1960, as the French New Wave was getting started, this terse and fatalistic (if conventional) noir about a gangster on the run from Milan to Nice to Paris was hastily swept aside, though Jean-Pierre Melville defended it passionately and wound up appropriating its star (Lino Ventura), actor Jean-Paul Belmondo (costarring here immediately after Breathless), source novelist (Jose Giovanni), and some of its male-bonding manner in various projects. The aesthetically conservative director, Claude Sautet, went on to make chamber pieces like Nelly and Monsieur Arnaud (1995); among the other notable contributors are composer Georges Delerue, cinematographer Ghislain Cloquet, and actors Sandra Milo, Marcel Dalio, and Betty Schneider. In French with subtitles. 103 min. (JR)