BORSALINO

France, 1970, 126 Minutes, Colour.
Jean-Paul? Belmondo, Alain Delon, Catherine Rouvel, Michel Bouquet.
Directed by Jacques Deray.

Borsalino is a most entertaining and interesting gangster film, recreating the atmosphere of Marseilles, city and gangland of 1930 with expert skill. It is one of those films which really transport the audience back into the past. Two punks help one of the city's bosses in a relatively small job, penalising fish sellers who didn't buy from the boss, and who then become ambitious and ruthlessly succeed, eliminating all their rivals by murder.

Belmondo (fairly charming and generally slow) and Delon, (smooth, unsmiling until he has achieved his ambition) make Francois and Roch interesting characters and director Deray keeps us interested in them as well as repelled by them. He shows us their friendship with one another, the endearing quirks they have despite their assumptions that they have a right to do what they like in the city. The French cast expertly take the parts of the complex of characters who make up the seamier side of a city. The style of the film is obviously homage to the American makers of gangster films of the 30's. On the other hand, a lot of the stock situations are played to the hilt and the film gets away with utilising such scenes as important parts of the plot as well as getting a number of laughs from the audience.

1. How did the detailed reconstruction of the period, the sets, costumes, vehicles, manners, muted colour, 30's musical score, enhance the atmosphere of the film?

2. How much of the film was serious and how much for laughs? Did you find that some of the sequences were parodies of the U.S. gangster films of the 30's?

3. Whatever the intentions of French homage to and parodies of American styles, did you find the film helped you to understand the period, the mentality of gangsterism in Marseilles and the characters and motivation of Roch and Francois?

4. How important in gangland were Roch and Francois when we first met them? what was the effect on themselves (and on the audience) of their first encounter and fight?

5. In recent crime/myth films (Bonnie and Clyde, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) as well as in In Cold Blood, it has been made clear that the individuals concerned may not have been able to act as they did just by themselves. They needed their partner to make a combined personality. Is this true of the exploits of Roch and Francois and of the ending?

6. How were there business bosses with such influence in Marseilles? How did they get their power, how did they exercise it, how did they keep it? At what point did they learn to kill and accept killing?

7. While Roch and Francois were attractive enough in their own way, their characters and their behaviour were repellent. How did the details of the film effectively convey this paradox?

8. The techniques of the disruption at the fish market were clever, but what were the effects in terms of suffering?

9. How did Roch and François become the leaders of Marseilles and sit at city council meetings and entertain guests lavishly at villas? Did either of them show any moral qualms about what they did or what they ought to have been doing?

10. Why did Francois decide to leave? Was he frightened of Roch?

11. Why did Roch disappear after Francois' death?

12. Roch and Francois were nothing but two egoistic punks who were driven by ambition, walked over people and ruthlessly succeeded. Is that a fair summing up of the two?