Louis Malle's study in corruption and compulsion set in late 19th-century Paris. In one of his last New Wave films before embarking on mostly commercial entertainments, Jean-Paul Belmondo plays George Randal, a young man raised to despise poverty, then left penniless when he is tricked out of his inheritance. In revenge, he becomes "the thief of Paris," targeting the bourgeois class he no longer belongs to. (Much attention is lavished on vintage burglary techniques.) The superb cinematography by Henri Decä;e luxuriates in the beauty and squalor of fin-de-siècle Paris, and Belmondo is supported by an extraordinary cast (Bujold, Charles Denner, Bernadette Lafont, Françoise Fabian...(themselves soon to become icons of the New Wave)).-Cinematheque Ontario