Saying something like ‘if the deal goes through, I won’t forget it’ in a smug and grandiose manner to the con artist Michel, who pretends to be the Swiss engineer Stockhammer and who will cause him to lose 40 million due to devalued sand, is deadly funny and ironic, as well as being a curious self-destructive premonition on the part of the defrauded Bontemps, without him obviously knowing it.The dialogue and the script in general by Ophuls and Sautet themselves are quite meticulous and intelligent, but that was exactly the Achilles’ heel of this ill-considered work.

Too much chaos for those of us who love art cinema, but too much wit for those who love commercial cinema. From the outset, for example, there is a taste of sophistication in the lies and fraudulent pantomime of Charlie Beau Sourir, played by Brasseur who, incidentally, proves that he had the talent for Deville or Resnais’ cinema, despite being typecast (or typecasting himself) in the genre of non-conformist policemen and unrepentant detectives of the 70s and 80s. Anyway.

Just seeing Gert Fröbe dance the cha-cha-cha and Belmondo and Moreau dance the waltz makes me feel that, on these nights when I watch the film, I too am immortal in my soul….Check it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0cqTftYmjo

It can be said that the scam against Bontemps (specifically the ‘real’ Bontemps and his partner Lachard) both Cathy and Michel incorporate elements similar to a ‘courses truquées’ (rigged races), even though it is not literally a bet on horses in the part of the sand pits owned by Bontemps, whom the fake Stockhammer leads to believe that he has found bauxite and other minerals worthy of enriching him and making his sand properties lucrative.

The parallelism with courses truquées mentioned by Cathy on the plane to the Côte d’Azur to deceive Lachard is that they use an elaborate, premeditated and obviously false deception to lure the victim Lachard into a financial trap, with a ‘fixed’ result for the horse Nagaud and the whole stratagem that will come in the final bet: in the final race, Michel leaves the briefcase with the fortune in a stall with a girl selling flowers and pretends to leave an empty briefcase in a safe because he notices that the two thugs sent by Reynald are hot on his heels to get hold of the fortune they have stolen. So we have Belmondo pretending to be an engineer with his first victim and a veterinary surgeon with the second. In the end, pretending to be furious about the horse ‘Pigeon Flight’ and the loss of 60 million to Garibaldi, Michel pretends to beat up Cathy for talking behind his back, with the aim of intimidating Lachard, who was hiding in the bedroom listening.

The crooks and Reynald arrive and beat Michel up, threatening to burn Cathy with cigarettes to reveal the location of the loot. Michel gives them the security key to the empty briefcase and gets rid of them as they rush to the airport, but not before revealing to Cathy that the real Bontemps is not the one they swindled on the island, and they agreed to return the stolen goods implicitly. Hearing Jeanne Moreau sing in Belmondo’s arms was something that made the film worthwhile, well done, unfortunately light because it is comical and has a tired premise, which is revenge by swindling.