The Crook

They call Simon the Swiss. His trade is theft and he is good at it. He puts together a kidnapping: the plan works, the money is collected, the child is returned unharmed. Then he is caught and goes to prison. He escapes. Outside he has to find where he hid the money and the woman who is waiting. The film does not tell this straight; time moves back and forth, the account given in an interrogation room mixes with what happened, and how much of what Simon says is true never becomes clear. Claude Lelouch directs the French film; two hours, with Jean-Louis Trintignant as Simon and a score by Francis Lai, who worked with Lelouch for years. It belongs to Lelouch's period after A Man and a Woman and applies the same approach to a crime picture: the cutting, the music and the faces come ahead of the story.