Monsieur Gangster

Directed by Georges Lautner, Les Tontons flingueurs (Monsieur Gangster) is a 1963 French-Italian-West German gangster comedy adapted from Albert Simonin's novel Grisbi or not grisbi. It serves as the closing chapter of the trilogy devoted to the small-time crook Max le Menteur, whose earlier adventures in Touchez pas au grisbi and Le cave se rebiffe had already reached the screen. Simonin, who shared the writing duties, traded the book's grim and bloody mood for a comic register, while Michel Audiard fashioned the dialogue. The principal cast includes Lino Ventura, Bernard Blier, Jean Lefebvre, Francis Blanche and Claude Rich.

Although reviewers showed little enthusiasm when it opened, the public took to the picture, and over the following decades it achieved cult standing as a fixture of French television. Audiard's quotable lines and even minor character names passed into everyday popular culture through repeated broadcasts and video releases. Its best-known sequence gathers the mobsters in a kitchen, awkwardly attempting conversation over a dreadful, throat-burning drink, a touch Lautner retained as a tribute to the film noir Key Largo. It remains his most celebrated work.