Robbed of Illusions

JEAN-PAUL BELMONDO may be the only actor in the world who could look suave, imperturbable and sexy straight through Armageddon. Louis Malle, using Belmondo's steeliness for its full impact, gives us ten long minutes of his cool gaze at the opening of Le Voleur. (This is an apparently neglected film that resurfaced this summer at the Telluride Film Festival.) In the dark, eerie moonlight we watch the burglar, Belmondo, crowbar his way into a ritzy, turn-of-the-century mansion. You have never seen such gaudy art nouveau furniture as lies within this house. And Belmondo sees no reason to pamper the stuff; he cracks open cabinets and bashes his cane through display cases. "This is a dirty business," he confides to us in a voice-over. "But I have one thing going for me. I do it dirtily."

Fair enough, we decide. Ripping off the rich is not necessarily a spiritual job. But why does Malle linger so long over the process, over the awkward thumps and collapsing objects? Belmondo appears in a marvelous Magritte poster-like costume--mustache, bowler hat and all--and we feel primed for a rakish romp. So why the dragging start? Perhaps the ensuing flashbacks into this life of crime will lend a clue.

The dapper fellow portrayed by Belmondo, we learn, has lost a fortune thanks to his inept uncle, who has speculated away his inheritance. Strike one against the inanity of capitalism. Meanwhile the woman Belmondo pines for, acted by a ravishing Genevieve Bujold, has become engaged to a silly looking suitor who promises nothing but a fat checking account. Strike two. So what is a clearly superior gentleman to do about this unappreciative bourgeois system of values? Strike back, of course. The suitor's fortune rests on his family's jewels, so Belmondo lifts them. His career in crime has taken wing.

IF THIS WAY of getting even impresses us as cynical, Malle certainly helps the decadence along. When the thief runs into his family priest during his getaway, one suspects he might repent. No need to, though, because the good curate turns out to be a master crook himself. The hypocrisy of it all sounds funny, but Malle's somber colors and slow pace stop the irony like a wad of lint in our throats. This should be a black humor giggle-fest, but nobody is laughing.

Perhaps the burglary business will pick up, we think. After all, the setting does look like the Gay Nineties, the heroes are whisking between London and Paris, and we know the industrial revolution has left a lot of nouveau riche loot lying around. Yet Belmondo keeps running into pushovers--sycophantic social climbers and corrupt concubines--and it looks as though all of Paris has conspired to make his capers unchallenging. After a half-a-film full of perfunctory purloining, he hopes to gain fresh inspiration from a legendary thief, Cannonier, recently released from Devil's Island. But Cannonier has gone off on a revolutionary tangent, and for all his Marxian trouble gets shot in the back by a policeman. There seems to be no romance in crime anymore: soon Belmondo's partner quits and the priest, LaMargelle, starts making disillusioned noises.

Belmondo's great backlash at the money-grubbing world has palled. We miss the scheming smiles and gleaming winks he projects so well, and even Bujold is having trouble lighting his Don Juan-ish spark. In a very late scene a telegram summons Belmondo to his uncle's deathbed, and he finally receives the chance to take revenge on the skinflint. He forges himself into the old man's will while his uncle helplessly looks on, eating his heart out but too sick to call for help. Yet even here Malle's directorial listlessness--intentional, no doubt, but unendingly strange--keeps us from enjoying this last, sadistic triumph. What was never more than wizened humor in this film has now completely dried up.

THE SOUR MESSAGE finally becomes clear: although the glamour has gone and the social thrust flagged, Belmondo can't get the criminal act out of his system. It may not show on his depressed face, but he needs the rush. How in the world Malle conceived the idea to weigh down such a juicy theme and such dashing actors with such a heavy moral remains unclear. But there it is. Le Voleur plays like the flip side to Malle's Lacombe, Lucien. Lacombe made us deal with a young man's value-free drift into collaboration with the Nazis--it showed us the aimless, human side of sellout. Le Voleur confronts us with a less interesting but equally unrelenting appraisal of a high-class thief's real motives--with the aimless, addicted side of a romantic stereotype.

As the flashbacks end and the dawn breaks on the caper that began the film, we see the dark rings under Belmondo's eyes and face the ugly mess of burglary for the first time in broad daylight. The whole business is not such a lark after all; Belmondo doesn't feel very sexy. Not Bujold, we now understand, not Belmondo's forged inheritance, not even a socio-economic destiny can satisfy this man's soul. Only his crowbar. The overall conception may strike us as weak, but we can now account for Malle's depressed editing. So if you feel that Malle as director has ripped you off from the slick adventure story you were expecting, at least you'll know the existential reason why.