From the Clan of Sicilians to A Monkey in Winter: the cinema of Henri Verneuil in five cult films

Le Clan des Siciliens, with Jean Gabin, Alain Delon and Lino Ventura, returns this Monday on France 3.

On December 6, 2000, in his entrance speech to the Academy of Fine Arts, Henri Verneuil asserted his commitment as a popular filmmaker. “Throughout these fifty years, I have witnessed the birth of a cinema which often sacrifices its instinct, its lyricism and its outbursts for a few narcissistic and cerebral satisfactions. In the absence of talent we believed ourselves obliged to be intelligent.”

At a time when New Wave cinema was at its peak, Henri Verneuil directed his first major film, Unimportant people with Jean Gabin. Referring to the popular and naturalist tradition of the pre-war period, he describes, like a squeaky song by Jacques Brel, the “little people” who, despite the strength of their love and their feelings, will never have a chance in their life. The first film to talk about clandestine abortions, it also received a glowing review from the young François Truffaut.

In 1962, Henri Verneuil only saw Jean Gabin to opposite Jean Paul Belmondo in A Monkey in wintera real popular success full of tirades that have become cult: “Toss the Teutons! You bunch of shit eaters!“, an ode to alcohol that takes you on a journey to forget the ailments, the duo was unanimous and took the film to the top of the Parisian box office for two weeks in a row, achieving more than 132,194 cumulative admissions in the four theaters that broadcast it. It would end up recording more than 2 million throughout France.

Jean-Paul Belmondo on the set of A Monkey in Winter

Adapted from a noir series, Henri Verneuil directed the following year Melody in the basement, the story of the association of an old gangster (Jean Gabin) and a young gangster (Alain Delon) on their way to rob a casino on the French Riviera. The film will guarantee the director’s notoriety across the Atlantic and will remain an essential reference for many filmmakers, including Quentin Tarantino, who will be inspired by it to Reservoir Dogs.

This success will ensure that of the winning trio of the Clan of the Siciliansin 1969. Bertrand Tavernier said it himself: “To bring Delon, Gabin and Ventura together in the same film, you couldn’t have been born last year.” A detective film recounting the escape of a killer, Roger Sartet (Alain Delon) after Commissioner Le Goff (Lino Ventura) had just arrested him. An escape organized by “the sicilian clan” led by Vittorio Manalese (Jean Gabin) which followed the planning of the theft of a collection of royal jewels exhibited in Rome.

In 1982, it was with A thousand billion dollars that Henri Verneuil features Patrick Dewaere playing a cheeky journalist from The Tribune declaiming to the big boss of a telephone company: “Personally, I never thought that you had freed us from a military occupation to replace us with an economic occupation.” An openly anti-American and premonitory film on the ravages of globalization with which Henri Verneuil shows that he does not leave aside his status as a committed filmmaker.

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