Flic Story (1975) – Film Review

Director: Jacques Deray
Cast: Alain Delon, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Renato Salvatori
Certificate: 15

By Sarah Morgan

Alain Delon and Jean-Louis Trintignant in a film together – what a treat!

These legends of French cinema are electrifying in director Jacques Deray’s 1975 classic French police procedural, playing against type too.

At the time, Trintignant was best known for appearing in such movies as And God Created Woman, A Man and a Woman and The Conformist, in which he played somewhat romantic roles. Delon, who produced the film, had dabbled with a life of crime before turning to acting, and played upon that in such films as Le Cercle Rouge, Le Samurai and the similarly named Un Flic.

“Wonderfully lowkey”

In Deray’s gripping tale, however, it’s Delon who plays the good guy, Roger Borniche, a dedicated and determined police detective on the trail of violent gangster Emile Buisson (Trintingant). It’s intriguing to imagine the roles being swapped, but hard to believe film would be better – it’s completely compelling and believable as it is.

What’s more it’s based on a true story, with the screenplay adapted from Borniche’s autobiography focusing on his nine-year pursuit of Buisson through the 1940s and 1950s. Buisson escaped from a psychiatric institution in 1947 following the death of his wife and child, headed back to Paris and immediately embarked on a murderous rampage, killing both innocent witnesses to his robberies and his accomplices.

As with many a TV and movie detective before him, Borniche struggles with bureaucracy before finally getting his man; the conclusion is wonderfully lowkey – there is no glorification of either the cop (flic being the French equivalent of the word) or his quarry. To say more would be to spoil it, but it’s utterly believable that it’s how the whole case came to its conclusion.

“Strong performances”

Delon does a good job as Borniche, but it’s Trintignant who really grips the attention. His Buisson is a cold-eyed killer, but not one completely without heart; there is a deep sadness about the character, particularly in a scene he shares with Claudine Auger as Borniche’s girlfriend. She plays the piano, the music clearly having an emotional impact on the man her lover is desperate to apprehend. It’s such moments that make Buisson a rounded character rather than a cardboard cutout killer-on-the-run.

Deray deserves many plaudits for the film’s success too; it is he, of course, who prompted such strong performances from his cast, and who insisted on realism over sentimentality.

Special features are brief, sadly, although an archive interview between Deray and Trintignant is well worth a look.

Sarah Morgan( Writer )

Sarah Morgan studied film journalism at post-graduate level with the BFI and has been writing about TV and film for PA Media’s newspaper, magazine and new media customers since 1996. She’s also written for a wide range of other publications, both online and in print, including the book Offbeat and Intermission magazine, and is a regular contributor to the Talking Pictures TV podcast. When she isn’t watching movies, she’s collecting and reading vintage crime and horror paperback books or, for her sins, watching her beloved Sheffield Wednesday.

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