Max et les ferrailleurs

Claude Sautet’s fifth feature sees him reunite the leading couple from his hugely successful Les Choses de la vie, Michel Piccoli and Romy Schneider. Once again the talented pair delivers the goods; their scenes together are scintillating.

Piccoli plays Max, a wealthy and disaffected former judge, who left the profession following the release of a guilty man due to lack of evidence. He has moved into the police force and is obsessed with serving out justice to criminals and truants but finds himself equally foiled with the badge as with the wig. Stumbling across his old acquaintance Abel, who hangs around with a group of small-time hoodlums, he spots an opportunity to set up his gang and get the win he has been looking for. He needs someone on the inside and that is when Abel’s girlfriend, Schneider’s prostitute Lily, enters the game.

Piccoli’s performance is the epitome of silent intensity; impossible to read, obsessive and compelling. Schneider brings a wonderfully savvy yet deeply vulnerable demeanour to their relationship and an enthralling dynamic is born between the two.

Sautet’s police thriller has all the gritty, hard-boiled elements you would expect from the genre and his film is as competent a noir as a Melville or a Tourneur. However, the change in direction is as not as marked as it may seem, as once more Sautet displays a mastery of human drama and emotion through his insightful depictions of people, at the mercy of their desires, disappointments and dreams.