The Thief of Paris

121 minutesCountryFranceLanguageFrenchBox office$9.2 million^[1]
1,225,555 admissions (France)^[2]

The Thief of Paris (Le voleur) is a 1967 French crime film directed by Louis Malle and starring Jean-Paul Belmondo as a professional thief (Georges Randal) at the turn of the century in Paris. The film is based on a book of the same title by Georges Darien.

The story centers on his burglaries as well as his ongoing relationship with his cousin Charlotte (Geneviève Bujold). It also features other well-known French actors including Marie Dubois, Charles Denner and Bernadette Lafont. The film had 1,225,555 admissions in France.^[3] It was entered into the 5th Moscow International Film Festival.

Plot

In the opening scene, Georges Randal, the thief of the title, breaks into a big house and begins to steal the valuable objects on display. A series of flashbacks (with occasional reversions to the present) then narrates the story of Randal's life. An orphan, he is raised by his uncle along with his cousin Charlotte, who grows into an attractive young woman with whom he falls in love. When Georges reaches twenty-one and asks for the money his parents left him, he finds that his unscrupulous uncle has stolen it all. He is rejected as a suitor for Charlotte because he is poor. She is then betrothed by her social-climbing father to a dim-witted aristocrat. Georges steals the fiance's family jewels and from then on, motivated by a sense of justice and desire for revenge, follows a successful career as a gentleman thief, targeting the haute bourgeoisie. At the end of the film, he has achieved all his aims: he is married to Charlotte, is living in his uncle's house, and has recovered the money his parents left him, as well as having accumulated a fortune through his crimes. Charlotte says to him 'You don't need to steal any more' but he replies 'You don't understand!' It is apparent that he has a compulsion to go on, knowing that he will eventually be caught. The final scene shows him boarding the train back to Paris with the haul from his latest robbery.

Cast

• Jean-Paul Belmondo as Georges Randal
• Geneviève Bujold as Charlotte Randal
• Christian Lude as Urbain Randal, uncle of Georges and father of Charlotte
• Marie Dubois as Geneviève Delpiels
• Julien Guiomar as L'abbé Félix la Margelle
• Paul Le Person as Roger Voisin called Roger-La-Honte
• Marlène Jobert as Broussaille, sister of Roger-La-Honte
• Françoise Fabian as Ida
• Bernadette Lafont as Marguerite
• Martine Sarcey as Renée Mouratet
• Jacques Debary as Courbassol
• Charles Denner as Cannonier

References

Further reading

• Malle on Malle, edited by Philip French, Faber and Faber, 1993.

External links

• The Thief of Paris at IMDb
• The Thief of Paris at Le Film Guide
• The Thief of Paris at Rotten Tomatoes