Du Rififi à Paname

One of those latter-day vehicles in which, portly and white-haired, Gabin brushes importunate girls aside to lavish attentions on his pet Boxer, meanwhile masterminding a series of unenterprising crimes which win him the usual admiring accolade: 'He's a real man!' Thoroughly routine stuff, it mixes some passable action sequences with statutory travelogue footage (London, Munich, Tokyo), allows Gabin to coast through without exerting himself, and finds time for George Raft to do his coin-flipping act. But Claudio Brook, taking time off from Buñuel (he was the major-domo in The Exterminating Angel and the nutty saint in Simon of the Desert) makes a refreshingly unstereotyped hero, and Gert Fröbe steals his scenes as a crook with leftist leanings.