French Poster
Parker’s name in film: Georges
Parker played by: Michel Constantin
If anyone knows how to get a copy of this film, please let me know.
Parker and crew run a heist on an entire French mining town during the night.
Reader Miroslav provides some information:
About the Parker movies, I happen to have seen several times Mise à Sac, THE French Stark adaptation (the other one – the Godard – being something else). Mise à Sac was a regular on French television when I was a kid/teenager (I am French) and at some time I recognized it was a Parker adaptation (Parker books were then edited by the “série noir” collection, the most famous crime books line in France then).
It is a very good movie and rather faithful to the book, considering it is a foreign adaptation.
The Parker character was a close mouthed pro played by Michel Constantin, a regular fixture in French crime movies and I remember that the Grofield character is as well correctly rendered and as in the book is courting the telephone girl (and taking her with him at it the end). The city was also a mining town as in the book.
The former chief of police in the book became in the movie a former employee of the town’s leading businessman and was motivated by revenge after being cuckholded by that man. In the end, he intrudes on the house (castle I think) of the guy and set it in fire (maybe killing some), triggering the fall of the gang while the score was initially a success.
Here is the main deviation, Parker is caught in the end.
All this is subject to my memory, I haven’t seen the film for awhile. It is not available on DVD.
The director Alain Cavalier is a very respected figure in French cinema who after a string of very good noir films with political subtext turned to avant garde. He did a series of elitist films who have a great reputation (Thérèse, Libera Me).
I have seen on the “Cinematheque Française” website a small piece saying that Mise à Sac was restored. Unfortunately no date is provided. Is this restoration a prelude to DVD edition?
I think the film should be added to the list of Parker-DVD-in-waiting/wanting (I would rank it below The Outfit but above The Split).
Swedish Poster
If any of you happen to have the linguistic ability and the detective skills to track down a print, let me know. As the film has never been released in America, it would be legal to transfer it to DVD and make it available here without having to worry about copyright. I think I could figure out a way to get that done, including subtitles, if I could get my hands on a print.
To The Score
Recent Comments