‘Corruption disgusts me; virtue makes me shudder’. One of the film’s many great lines, written by Michel Audiard, with Claude Sautet doctoring the structure. In the film, corruption is everywhere: finance, the law, the police, the highest realms of government, all intermingling with the mafia, each out to make a franc. Alain Delon knows this, and he normally doesn’t much care. The only reason he gets involved is because his friend was murdered, no matter that the friend was killed for himself killing someone else. Friendship and loyalty are all. The film is a metaphor for Giscard D’Estaing’s government and a denunciation of the France of the day. Stan Getz on sax seems to blow every inflection of the blues —  waves of various kinds of sadness — over the film’s narrative. The film has a superb all-star cast: Klaus Kinski, Mireille Darc, Maurice Ronet, Stéphane Audran, a very beautiful and very young Ornella Mutti. The word pourri in the original French title signifies much more than ‘corrupt; it has connotations of decay,rot, infected, venal. An excellent noir; if it were more visually interesting, I’d call it great. As it is, it has a complex story, like an unfurling spider’s web, well told, a beautifully evoked mood, a consistently maintained tone, with some fine action. It was a considerable success at the box office, a relief for Delon, after a bit of a drought. Delon is so good he was nominated as Best Actor for the César that year