A caper film, but almost twenty years post-Rififi it's a colder world for the jewel thief. Alain Delon, a highline thief who lives in studied elegance when he's not languishing in jail, plans an elaborate jewelry-store heist with two cohorts picked up almost at random: an escaped convict (Gian-Maria Volonté) and an alcoholic lapsed-lawman rescued from a lost weekend (a great role for Yves Montand). The popular French actor André Bourvil is superbly cast against type as the nemesis cop, Matteï, a straight guy who lives alone with cats (Melville's). We learn his routine; he's a male Jeanne Dielman and can twist the knife when needed. Twisting his handle is the police commissioner who took his lessons well from the Gestapo: everyone's guilty. Typically of Melville, the exciting moments are not the violent ones; the thrill is in the camera, with its "gaze" of surveillance and fraternity. Long live the guilty.