Une balle dans le canon (1958)
Directed by Michel Deville, Charles Gérard

Film Review

Michel Deville's illustrious film career as a director began not so much with a bang as with a muted whimper, via this derivative crime drama.  Deville shared the directing duties with another first timer, Charles Gérard, who is better known today as an actor, most prominently in a series of films directed by Claude Lelouch in which he played a character named Charlot.  Leaping onto the first band wagon that came their way, namely American-style film noir gangster films, Deville and Gérard did a good job of mopping up all the clichés but failed spectacularly to deliver an original work of cinema that was likely to grab the attention of critics and audiences.  Despite being part-scripted by Albert Simonin, whose crime novels have frequently been adapted for French cinema, Une balle dans le canon manages to be aimless, dull and formulaic, with Deville's penchant for random plot digressions weakening an already insipid narrative.  The one saving grace is that the film is reasonably well-cast, with Paul Frankeur providing the dramatic muscle it badly needs as stereotypical hoodlum.  Jean Rochefort had his first credited film role here, appearing in a scene with another celebrated actor near the start of his career, Michel Lonsdale.  After this far from auspicious beginning, Michel Deville found his voice with his next film, Ce soir ou jamais (1961), the first in a series of gentle comedies that earned him his directing credentials.

Film Synopsis

Dick and Tony are two veterans of the war in Indochina who have turned to trafficking to make a living.  They accept a commission from a gangster known as Le Maltais to deliver 25 million francs.  When their employer fails to turn up to claim his money, the two men decide to keep the money for themselves and buy a nightclub. Anxious that Le Maltais will one day try to reclaim his money, Dick and Tony hire a hitman, Pépère, to get rid of him.  Unfortunately, this only makes a bad situation worse...