Director: Henri Verneuil
Cast: Jean Gabin, Alain Delon, Lino Ventura

Several years ago, the world was made aware of a Korean movie named Parasite, which not only received a great amount of critical acclaim, also managed to make a great deal of money. When the movie's director Bong Joon Ho accepted the Golden Globe's award for best foreign film, he made the statement, "Once you overcome the one-inch tall barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced to so many more amazing films." Well, almost immediately after he made that statement, something of a backlash started to brew up on social media. Many people on my continent seemed to feel that their intelligence was being insulted by this statement. But some observers took a look at the people of my continent generating the backlash or supporting it, and found that a great deal of these people were people that not only were turning up their noses against movies with subtitles, they found the mere idea of foreign films to be repellent. Yes, you probably already know this. Although we have had more than one hundred years of cinema around the world, getting North Americans to accept foreign cinema has always been a challenge. Looking at why the majority of North Americans feel this way comes up with a few common factors. As I illustrated earlier, North Americans in general don't like subtitles. Another reason is that many North Americans associate "foreign cinema" with movies that are arty and serious in nature instead of being like "fun" Hollywood movies. A third reason seems to be that North Americans grow queasy about the idea of seeing a story set in a culture much different from their own. Lastly, another reason seems to be that since foreign movies usually don't have the budgets of your typical Hollywood blockbuster, they feel that foreign movies won't look as slick and expensive as Hollywood movies.

There are additional reasons why foreign movies are a tough sell to North Americans, such as the fact foreign movies usually lack well known stars to North Americans, but I feel those four reasons I wrote above are the main reasons. I would like to take a little time to look at those arguments and show that they are not valid. First, you hate the idea of having to read subtitles? Well, you already read a lot in your life every day between the time that you wake up and when you go to bed, from road signs to documents at work. And it really doesn't take that much practice to read subtitles while observing what's happening in a movie. Next, the argument that foreign movies are almost arty snoozefests isn't true at all. While it's true that the foreign movies that generally play in theaters in North America are of an artistic nature, if you were to go to the countries these movies come from, you would see that these countries usually also make plenty of actioners, comedies, horrorfests, science fiction, and fantasies - just like Hollywood does. You just have to search a little to find many of these movie on streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. The argument that watching a story set in a foreign culture is off-putting doesn't make sense either. Haven't there been many complaints by moviegoers that Hollywood movies repeat the same stuff over and over? So then why not see a foreign perspective and get a story with a fresh angle? Lastly, the argument that foreign movies aren't worthwhile since they have lower budgets is nonsense. Ever since the beginning of cinema, foreign filmmakers have been making plenty of genre movies on lower budgets that look perfectly fine even when compared to Hollywood movies. You also have to remember that in many countries, the cost of making a movie is often lower, so they can stretch out a limited budget well. Also, consider the movies from Blumhouse (and other American independent outfits) that have found big receptive audiences in North America despite having very low budgets.

So the next time you come across a non-Hollywood cinematic work in your travels, why not take the time to study it carefully and see if it might meet your tastes. Even better, take the plunge and watch it. Unless, of course, it's a Canadian cinematic work - as I've told my readers countless times, Canadian filmmakers seldom make real movies. To encourage my readers to be more interested in non-Hollywood movies, I thought I would devote time to look at the French movie The Sicilian Clan. Before you are scared off by the movie for being (gasp!) French, let me tell you that this movie involves a big multimillion-dollar caper, and along the way has a lot of action and suspense. To sweeten the deal for you, let me also reveal that the movie was picked up by a major Hollywood studio (20th Century Fox) for distribution in North America. So if that happened to the movie, it must deliver the goods, right? Before getting into that, I will give you a brief plot synopsis. In France, an expert jewel thief by the name of Roger Sartet (Alain Delon, The Concorde: Airport '79) is behind bars, but one day his escape from custody is arranged by Sicilian mafia chief Vittorio Manalese (Jean Gabin, Grand Illusion), Vittorio and his fellow mafia associates arranged the escape because while in custody, Roger learned from a fellow inmate about the security system at a Rome diamond exhibition the inmate helped set up. Vittorio feels that Roger could assist with a planned mass heist of the diamonds. It is soon determined that the best way to steal the diamonds is when they leave the exhibition and get transported by airplane to New York, so Roger and the others plan to get on the flight and steal the diamonds before the plane lands across the Atlantic. But Roger knows that not only does he have his hands full with the planning and execution of the robbery, a stubborn police commissaire named Le Goff (Lino Ventura, The Valachi Papers) is in hot pursuit of him, and is getting closer every hour to capturing Roger.

Although you may think at this point of your life that caper movies have become familiar stuff, let me repeat that The Sicilian Clan is French, so I was looking forward to seeing a well-worn formula hopefully juiced up with a fresh foreign perspective. Well, things were different in many areas, though while at times it was for the better, sometimes it was for the worst. I will list some of the good stuff first. I thought that the lead characters were somewhat pleasingly offbeat, with both their writing and the players playing them. While Manalese, for example, is a mobster at the top of the food chain, he actually gets his hands dirtier than you might think, making some major contributions to the caper, both in its planning and actual execution. Actor Gabin gives this character a (mostly) pleasant demeanor, so when he occasionally makes various unexpected asides such as his plans to peacefully retire after the heist, you really believe this guy has both a soft side and a criminal side. I could also believe the character of policeman Le Goff despite actor Ventura bringing in physical features that suggest someone who is somewhat meek. Every action that Ventura makes in the role suggests great confidence, so great that almost immediately you see that Le Goff is someone who is very smart and a formidable opponent to any criminal who will cross his path. As expected, his main opponent in the movie - the character of Sartet - has plenty of street smarts and exudes his own kind of confidence. He is soft-spoken, a man of few words, and more than a little believably cold at times. Yet at the same time, the screenplay and actor Delon show that while Sartet has the confidence, he doesn't always have the brains. Hours after he escapes and a manhunt is on the way, he actually risks going out on the Paris streets to buy groceries and the services of a prostitute. Though of course he manages to keep his distance from the cops during his shopping, this foolish risk-taking shows Sartet is not perfect, and there is a chance he might not prevail before the end credits roll. More suspense then.

I feel I should also add something else about my observations of the character of Sartet that I thought was interesting. There are several long periods of the movie where either he is mostly in the background of scenes, or simply not there at all. At times it's a little mystifying why they bothered to get a very famous (and no doubt expensive) French actor for the role, and there were times that I wished Delon had more opportunities to show his cool. Another surprise about the movie is how it portrays the entire caper plot from beginning to end. More that twenty-five percent of the movie goes by before we get an inkling of what the bad guys are ultimately planning, and the movie subsequently does not go into great detail about how the caper will be pulled off. No doubt that is to surprise the audience when the caper does actually happen, but all the same the actual caper is kind of a letdown. The caper is, well, kind of calm. It's very low key, even during one portion when a complication the robbers didn't anticipate comes into play. With the robbers not having to go through a great number of problems and challenges, it's kind of hard at times to care (or not care, for that matter) if the robbers do mange to succeed. The robbery... just happens. Worse than this is that there isn't a satisfying payoff in this sequence. Though the robbers do get the diamonds, this is actually implied; we don't get any moments where we see the robbers get their hands on the diamonds either during the robbery or afterwards. In fact, after the robbery I believe that the diamonds (and their eventual fate) are never brought up again by anyone. The movie instead just moves to the expected double-crosses that you usually get at this stage in movies like this one.

Those double-crosses, by the way, do end the movie somewhat unsatisfactorily, because they force one prime character to somehow lose his intelligence and put himself/herself in a situation where others can easily defeat him/her. It feels way out of character. Though I wish that director Verneuil (Guns For San Sebastian) changed this ending to something more believable, and made the robbery have a lot more tension and payoff, I will admit that his strengths with this movie do outweigh any weaknesses. Verneuil does add suspense in other parts of the movie, like the nifty opening when Sartet escapes from police custody, and later when the police almost catch him. Also, while the generally relaxed feeling of The Sicilian Clan doesn't work in the robbery sequence, it actually melds well with other parts of the movie. A person's life - even a robber's - isn't on full alert most of the time. It feels more realistic here, one additional reason is that Verneuil manages to put in a little gritty feeling along the way. Not everything can be clean and polished, despite what Hollywood movies usually claim. This is all taking place in Europe, for one thing. That explains the nice twangy score by Ennio Morricone (The Five Man Army), and also a significant amount of nudity on display. Although The Sicilian Clan has its aforementioned weaknesses, weaknesses that hold it back from classic heist status, it does work for the most part. And even when the movie does show its weaknesses, these weaknesses are often presented in a way that are kind of interesting and original to see despite you acknowledging they really don't work for the benefit of the movie.

(Posted February 27, 2025)