So Gabin out of prison, decides to ride his last score with Francis, played by Alain Delon ... On the way to rob the safe of the Palm Beach, a casino in Cannes.Melody en sous-sol (the title is already brilliant) with my favorite duo Gabin, Delon. Gabin always made me think of my grandfather, a real man. Delon it has never done better. I love this old French, the 60's, the clothes, the fags, the pick-up, the jazz music and with that a famous story of truants ... Then we taste Audiard: "You raves not on the sea, it has always been there" To watch again and again .

Melodie En Sous-Sol (aka Any Number Can Win) is an enjoyable little caper, but the big trouble is that Time has not been very kind to it. It starts out with puzzled and chunky old Jean Gabin wandering through some then fashionable 1960's modern style streets and buildings accompanied by some brash and hip modern jazz music. And then the olde plot starts: man out of jail goes home and almost immediately tells his wife he's planning One Last Big Job involving the stealing of "about a billion" francs. This turns out to be a meticulously planned op, of the type Mission Impossible did so much better a few years later, and that (and Topkapi etc) was a team affair - however this was planned by Gabin even though Alain Delon seemed to have the lion's share of the work to do.I bet all those cool swingers of the '60's never would have thought they and their music would date faster than those elegant artistes of the 30's! Favourite bits: Delon's long solo bit bringing the caper to fruition; the predatory Countess Doublianoff calling him no gentleman after he peremptorily dismissed her; the cops strolling by and describing the bags they were looking for - I wanted Delon to mutter something as did Peter Lorre in Arsenic And Old Lace when he thought he was going to be discovered; Gabin's expressionless expression.Even though you may have seen it all before in films made since this one it was shot in a nice black and white with good acting and good production which holds the attention well - and it's all worthwhile anyway when you get to the delicious last 5 minutes when Delon's and Gabin's feelings were definitely too deep for words!

I don't know why this movie is so little-celebrated -- it's terrific. It's so assured. It brings in the worn and smooth Jean Gabin for his last job (of course), and through some exchanges of witty banter gives us some time to get to know him and his wife before introducing his former cellmate, Alain Delon, as the leather-jacketed toughie. They're both excellent here, especially Gabin, who's polite but still certainly in control. He gives a wryness, like a fat Orson Welles, to his performance. The hot-tempered Delon gives a jolt of vitality to the picture. The entire movie is nice and slow, perfectly glamorous, the best of swinging, jazzy '60s cool. In a conventional movie, when Delon is told to seduce a ballerina so he and Gabin can gain a backstage pass to the theater, the courting would have ended with him buying her a drink. But in this film, it lasts for a good half an hour. And it's never boring. Those nice, long sequences explain everything fully. Not the plot, per se, but elements of the plot -- Delon's seducing of the dancer (which he mucks up more than once); Delon's brother-in-law, who in a normal movie would have been nothing but a side character, here is fully-fleshed out; Gabin's wife. And that long, languorous rhythm is what makes the major, lengthy set piece so memorable -- it's where Delon slinks around, slipping up occasionally, climbing up stairs, crawling through a ventilation shaft, and hiding in an elevator (very "Mission: Impossible"), eventually leading to the robbery. And it has one of the best endings to any caper movie that I've seen. 9/10

A prototypical heist flick. Old ex-con Jean Gambin is looking for one last score before he retires -- the robbery of a casino on the French Riveria. He enlists Delon, a cocky punk, to help him. Has all of the features: old guy looking for one last score, young active guy who still sort of needs to learn the ropes, complicated heist relying on split second timing, things that go wrong at the last second, unexpected developments, a lot of masquerades, etc. Early on there's some playing around with the notion that Gambin symbolizes a time that is passing, but that isn't really developed, settling down instead to more standard genre fare. Heist is clever and well done, the remake of Ocean's Eleven later stole some of the ideas here. Final shot has that typical Gallic "throw your hands up in despair" kind of thing going for it. Cast is good, with Delon in particular a standout in the kind of role he was meant to play in those years.