Ballade pour un voyou (1963)
Directed by Claude-Jean Bonnardot

Film Review

Director Claude-Jean Bonnardot followed up his critically acclaimed first feature Moranbong (1960) with this singularly eerie film noir, a self-consciously slick thriller which just manages to fall short of outright parody.  The plot is not much to right home about (just a lame spy intrigue involving a boobytrapped suitcase) but Bonnardot and his cinematographer Jean Badal turn it into a stylish odyssey that is richly evocative of classic American film noir and yet unsettlingly different.  Recently revealed in Marcel Carné's Les Tricheurs (1958), Laurent Terzieff was well-chosen to play the central protagonist, a starkly authentic portrait of disenfranchised youth that sits surprisingly well alongside the film's conventional (and somewhat dated) film noir trappings.  Philippe Noiret crops up as a creepily ambiguous police inspector and Michel Vitold turns in a chilling performance as the villain of the piece, but it is Terzieff, fresh and dangerous, who monopolises our attention as a rough and ready version of James Dean.  It's hard to believe but this was to be Bonnardot's final film for the cinema - he would devote the remainder of his career to French television.

Film Synopsis

Recently released from prison, juvenile delinquent Vincent Vivant tries to make a fresh start as a garage mechanic.  Tempted by easy money, he agrees to act as a courier for a spy named Stéphane, his errand being to take a mysterious suitcase to its intended owner.  Vincent is curious over the contents of the suitcase, but he heeds Stéphane's warning that he will regret it if he attempts to open it.  Realising that the man who is trailing him has orders to kill him, Vincent goes on the run and is soon pursued by the police and Stéphane's trigger-happy henchmen.  Stéphane takes Vincent's girlfriend Martha hostage and offers her up in exchange for the suitcase...