France/Italy | 1954 | b&w | 94 mins | dir. Jacques Becker, with Jean Gabin, René Dary, Lino Ventura, Jeanne Moreau | cert.12 | in French with English subtitles

An ageing and weary Gabin attempts to retire after one last robbery. Instead he finds himself in a world of double-crosses. Becker's affectionate portrayal of dapper, hedonistic Montmartre gangsters re-ignited Gabin's career and the popularity of the genre in French cinema.

Touche pas à la femme blanche

France/Italy | 1974 | col | 108 mins | dir. Marco Ferreri, with Marcello Mastroianni, Catherine Deneuve, Michel Piccoli, Philippe Noiret | cert. 18 | in French with English subtitles

Ferreri's follow-up to La Grande bouffe is an outlandish, absurdist, spoof spaghetti western, a riotous reenactment of the events leading up to the Battle of Little Big Horn, starring Mastroianni as a ludicrously vain General Custer and Michel Piccoli as an effiminate Buffalo Bill. The political satire is both comic and caustic: anachronisms abound (Paris stands in for the Wild West, Nixon is president) and parallels are drawn between America's genocidal Indian Wars and its intervention in Vietnam.