Max et les ferrailleurs (1971)
Directed by Claude Sautet

Film Review

In both content and style, Max et les ferrailleurs makes a striking contrast with Claude Sautet's previous film - the dreamlike, emotionally charged and poetic Les Choses de la vie (1969).   On the surface, the film resembles a traditional policier, a genre which was still very much beloved by French cinema audiences in the 1970s.  The familiar elements of the French crime thriller are all there - morally ambiguous policemen, a band of monosyllabic testosterone-loaded crooks, a daring bank robbery and, of course, the ill-fated adorable young prostitute.  Yet it is apparent that Sautet's film is far more than just another policier - and it is certainly a very different kind of work to his previous foray into this genre, Classe tous risques (1960).  Deliciously dark in its pessimistic assessment of human nature, Max et les ferrailleurs is a devastatingly cruel study in the art of manipulation.   This is film noir writ large with a capital N.

There are some obvious similarities with the films of Jean-Pierre Melville, a French director who elevated the policier genre to the level high art in a series of films which have passed into film legend (Le Doulos, Le Samouraï, Le Deuxième souffle, to name just three).  The shifting moral perspective, an all-pervading sense of corruption as dark hidden agendas are gradually exposed - this is the disturbing world where moral certainties are muddled or even absent, where the conventions as to who is good and who is bad are cynically perverted.  As a series of high-profile judicial, corporate and political scandals shook France in the 1970s, it began to seem that Melville's world of paranoia and moral ambiguity was perhaps closer to reality than the world of the conventional policier, in which the roles of the good guy and the bad guy are well-defined.  Max et les ferailleurs can plausibly be considered as one of the first of a new kind of crime film, the néo-polar, a genre which reflected the French people's uneasy suspicion of their law enforcers and leaders.

The thriller elements of Max et les ferrailleurs are very visible but really occupy a minor part of the film.  The film's focus is the fascinating relationship between its two principal characters, Max and Lily.  Max is a cynical ex-judge whose obsession with catching criminals drives him to hatch a scheme of Machiavellian proportions (with - tellingly - the complicity of his police superiors).  Lily is a self-centred prostitute whose only real ambition is to get hold of as much money as she can with the least effort.  The two characters first appear to be poles apart, but as their relationship develops, it becomes evident that they have a great deal in common.  Both come from comfortable Bourgeois backgrounds which both have rejected in favour of a more precarious and fulfilling lifestyle; and both have a fatal, totally uncontrollable obsession.  Max is obsessed with prosecuting wrongdoers (seeing himself as a kind of supreme arbiter - judge, jury and executioner); Lily is obsessed with money and is attracted to a wad of one hundred franc notes like a magpie is to silver.  When the two characters come together it is inevitable that they will serve each other's purpose; it is perhaps also inevitable that they will fall in love, making Max's tragic destiny ineluctable.  Max and Lily were made for each other - paradoxically, their inability to get into bed together makes that even more apparent.

As the silent manipulative Max, Michel Piccoli is insurpassable, a perfectly restrained performance which shows the actor at his best.  Compare Piccoli in this film with Alain Delon in Le Samouraï and you might plausibly conclude the two actors are playing the same character - an anonymous maverick living comfortably outside the rules of human society yet having a conviction of moral purpose which prevents him from being seen as a villain, no matter how badly he behaves.  Piccoli, a master when it comes to playing ambiguous characters, is thoroughly in his element in Max et les ferrailleurs.   In his long filmography, the films which stand out are those where he is partnered with Romy Schneider, a stunningly beautiful Austrian actress  whose talents cannot be overstated.   Piccoli and Schneider had previously featured in Sautet's earlier film, Les Choses de la vie, but their on-screen rapport is much more effective, much more profound in Max et les ferrailleurs.  Both actors bring a subtlety to their roles which renders their characters and their evolving relationship meaningful yet infinitely perplexing.

Although overshadowed by Sautet's subsequent films, (and unfairly written off by the critics as just another policier), Max et les ferrailleurs is a compelling and troubling work which merits a fresh reappraisal.  Philipe Sarde's spine-tingling music adds to the films glacial atmosphere whilst lending a sense of mystery to the strangely reserved Max.  Although it has a cold cynical edge, the film also posseses a tortured humanity which is typical of Sautet's later works, although this only becomes evident in the film's shocking (and brilliantly realised) "moment of truth" denouement.

Film Synopsis

Disillusioned with the French legal system, Max abandons his career as a judge to become a policeman, believing that he will be more effective at bringing criminals to justice.  His obsession with catching crooks red-handed leads him to devise a scheme which takes him outside the law: he will manufacture a crime to deliver the result he is seeking.   His victim is Abel, a one-time crook who now works as a scrap-metal merchant with a band of thugs and ex-convicts.  Max lures Abel's girlfriend, a prostitute named Lily, by pretending to be a banker and using her love of money to manipulate her.  Through Max's influence Lily coerces Abel and his friends into mounting a bank robbery.  The plan cannot fail...