This is a region-free DVD+R without case or artwork.
In French with English subtitles. Also known as
Raids on the City and
Sinners of Paris.
Directed by
Pierre Chenal.
Michel Piccoli plays a police inspector whose best friend is murdered on the orders of gang boss
Charles Vanel. The inspector knows full well that Vanel is too crafty and well-connected to ever stand trial for his crime, so he carefully lays a subtle trap for his adversary.
Rafles sur la Ville is easily one of the most stylish and compelling French
policiers of its era, not quite in the league of Melville's sublime masterpieces but far superior to the majority of potboiler thrillers that came to dominate the French box office around this time. Marcel Grignon's cinematography lends a suitably fatalistic mood to the film, the exterior locations being particularly well lit to heighten the sense of impending doom. Chenal's mise-en-scène is slicker and sharper than any other film he made in this decade, and this gives the film a striking modernity that most thrillers of this period patently lacked.
