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Growing older is a balancing act between skills that have never been better, and abilities that sometimes betray. At 50, Max the Liar has never possessed more wisdom about his profession of burglary. But he no longer cares to make the effort, and his dream is to salt away 96 kilos in gold bars that have been stolen at Orly Airport. Then he will retire. Max is a solid, well-groomed, impeccably dressed, flawlessly polite man whose code is so deeply embedded that he never refers to it, even indirectly. During the course of three days, he uses all of his wisdom and experience to make his dream come true, and it is almost enough.

Max is played by Jean Gabin, named "the actor of the century" in a French poll, in Jacques Becker's "Touchez Pas au Grisbi," a 1954 French crime film that uncannily points the way toward Jean-Pierre Melville's great "Bob Le Flambeur" the following year. The two films follow similar story arcs and have similar heroes: middle-age men, well-liked, able to figure the odds, familiar in their haunts of clubs and restaurants, vulnerable only because of the passions of their hotheaded pals. Gabin plays a man of few words, who displays warmth that is real but understated; a man who is always thinking a step ahead, using brainwork instead of footwork or gunplay to survive in the underworld.

His weakness is his friendship for Riton (Rene Dary), a sidekick who he calls "Porcupine Head," and who he has essentially carried for years. Does Max love Riton? Max seems to be the current or former lover of almost every woman in the movie, and yet, yes, Riton is who he loves. There's a lovely scene where Max outsmarts rival hoods who are trying to tail him, and takes Riton with him to a safe house -- an apartment Riton never knew existed.

There he pours them a bottle of wine, makes a midnight meal of pate and biscuits, and takes fresh pajamas, blankets and toothbrushes out of a cabinet and hands them to his friend. Although Gabin's face reveals nothing, we sense that Max enjoys this domestic interlude more than anything else that happens in the movie; certainly he is bored in nightclubs and tired of crime, and although he visits his elegant mistress Betty (Marilyn Buferd) for conjugal observances, this involves more ritual than desire. ...