A classically Melvillean roundabout of ambiguity and betrayal in the underworld: Serge Reggiani is an ex-con who suspects his best friend, Jean-Paul Belmondo, of being a stool pigeon, or finger man. In an interview with Rui Nogueira (Melville, 1971), Melville notes that he was particularly proud of the 9-minute, 38-second shot in policeman Clain's office (an exact replica, he adds, of the office used in Rouben Mamoulian's City Streets, 1931). As in Bob le Flambeur and Le Samourai, here Melville's gangsters display an impassive, underplayed demeanor, increasing a sense of equivocacy in the characters. "The characters are all double," Melville notes, "they are all false. I even signal this...at the beginning of the film with the truncated line from Celine: 'One must choose: Die...or Lie?' I cut the end, which is 'Me, I live!'" His cops have "that layer of cynicism and vulgarity which all policemen acquire after associating with crooks for a certain number of years.... In general I think my gallery of policemen...corresponds to a certain truth, even though I take care never to be realistic."