The first teaming of Charles Bronson and Alain Delon, a huge success in France with a two-year run in some cinemas in Paris; and one in a series of films that helped Bronson become an international star. Both have their shirts off for a large chunk of the film. One look better shirtless; the other with his clothes on. Guess which?

What role so much skin played in the film’s success in 1968 is open to question but clearly men’s bodies could be displayed for their ‘to-be-looked-at-ness’ without needing violence as an alibi before Brad Pitt made it modish. The film is beautifully designed, looks terrific and the direction is efficient without it ever being inspired.

A very watchable heist film. Bronson and Delon are legionnaires who arrive in Marseille from Algeria the same day, meet by chance and end up being pitted together to the point where they end up the patsies in a pre-planned heist. The last third of the film involves finding the real culprits. A generally enjoyable genre piece marred by a kind of misogyny which one suspects is unthinking but which I find excessive even for the time (see clip below).

The fight sequences once more raise questions about historicising violence. They’re very different than what we’re used to seeing now (see below) and feel unbelievable and unexciting. Are they just bad or have current styles, aesthetics and conventions affected how action from another time may or may not spark audience excitement today?

Bronson gets a stupid recurring bit of schtick gambling on whether dropping a coin in a glass will make the liquid overflow. One detects the influence of Hawks’ Scarface here but the business didn’t do for Bronson what it did for George Raft.

There’s some suggestion that there are homosexual currents in the way that the relationship between Bronson and Delon is depicted though it could just be sketchy writing where a degree of projection aids whatever holes one wants to fill.

José Arroyo