Warning: Spoilers.
Two Men in Town starts as a tale about a former gangster getting out of prison after ten years and trying to go straight. By the end it’s an anti-capital punishment message film. As such, it’s decent, but not really something that is going to change any minds on the issue, I wouldn’t think.
Gino Strabliggi (Alain Delon) gets out of prison a bit early, having gained parole due to the intercession of veteran “educator”—i.e., social worker—Germain Cazeneuve (Jean Gabin). Gino has a loving wife waiting for him, and we watch as he builds himself a life. The couple even begins to hang out with Germain’s loving family, and the film assumes an idyllic tone that obviously doesn’t last.
Since this is a European film about a guy trying to go straight, I don’t think I’m blowing much by noting that things do not keep going Gino’s way. Needless to say, the film tells us this is Society’s fault, as Gino ends up being so hounded by an insanely suspicious police detective that he basically goes temporarily nuts and kills the guy in a rage.
This is a pretty good movie on the character level, but as a political statement, it’s a bit too slanted to be affective. Society is to blame, of course, and although American viewers may be aghast at the powers of the cops over in France (and the police detective also seems to break those rules that exist), the fact remains that the narrative is entirely tilted towards Gino, who manfully struggles through assorted tragedies until Fate finally gets him. Gino is just too clean cut, and his reformation too effortlessly achieved, which ends up meaning that the police’s suspicions of him seem too unreasonable to even be credible.
Moreover, we never see his earlier crimes portrayed, and nor do we learn what he actually did past committing armed robbery with a gang. (These guys pop up every once in a while—including a very young Gerard Depardieu as basically a Klaus Kinski type—just to further bedevil and cast unwarranted suspicion on Gino.) During the trial after he kills the cop, the fatherly Germain sardonically notes the presence in the court of the detective’s family all decked out in mourning clothes.
The idea communicated is that having the family of the murder victim on hand is nothing but a cheap ploy, which is pretty obnoxious to start with. Here, however, it’s entirely hypocritical. “The prosecution has its advantages,” Germain tartly notes about the presumably cynical presence of the detective’s family. Well, it turns out that the filmmakers have their advantages, too. Throughout the film Gino is surrounded by exaggeratedly wonderful people who love and respect him deeply, a fact the movie constantly plays upon. In fact, so saintly is Gino that when he began to crumble under the pressure of the cop’s fixation on him, I didn’t entirely buy it.
For his part, the detective is played as a cartoon boogeyman throughout. So one-note is he that it’s actually shocking to see he has family during the trial. Again, the contrast with “victim” Gino is a bit too clear cut. Particularly propaganda-ish is that the detective’s briefly family is made up of elderly, unattractive people, while Gino’s loved ones include a veritable bevy of beautiful women. The latter includes American starlet Mimsy Farmer, who after appearing in several American exploitation films (Hot Rods to Hell, etc.), moved to Europe and achieved a decent amount of fame in films over there.
Then there’s the central casting. Having (in France) superstars like Alain Delon and Jean Gabin play the leads is like having the young Paul Newman as the likeably and beleaguered hero and Spenser Tracy in his elder statesman days as the film’s inevitably World Weary conscience. Or, in today’s terms, Denzel Washington and Morgan Freeman. Casting like that is meant to telegraph which side the audience should be on, no matter the facts the film presents them.
As a story of a guy who gets screwed over, the film is fine and worth a look for those interested in Euro films of that vintage. As a message piece, it’s thankfully underplayed and non-hysteric, but again entirely too weighted in favor of the protagonist to really accomplish anything. Meanwhile, Germain’s gassy speeches about solving the “root causes” of crime, i.e, various forms of social injustice, are typically vague and unhelpful. Sadly, one of the root causes of crime is criminals. As a guy, Gino is convincing. As a symbol for ex-cons everywhere, he’s rather less so.
Two Men in Town is part of a batch of ’70s Delon films put out by Kino. I’ve seen a couple of these, and they’re generally decent, but not a patch on the classic gangster films both he and Gabin made, amongst other films. Believe me, before you get anywhere near this, you’ll want to check out Purple Noon, The Red Circle, Le Samourai, L’Eclisse, The Grand Illusion, Pepe le Moko, Port of Shadows and others. There’s a lot of great films there, and once you watch those (and re-watch them), then you might want to move on to the men’s lesser works, like this.
