For his adaptation of the Auguste Le Breton novel, Henri Verneuil assembled three French cinema heavyweights: two Melville regulars—Alain Delon and Lino Ventura—alongside their legendary forebear Jean Gabin. This time, Ventura is not a fellow gangster but Police Commissioner Le Goff on a mission to recover Delon’s wily Roger Sartet after he ingeniously escapes during a death-row transfer. The slippery Sartet accomplishes his miraculous feat with organized assistance from the Italian family of the title, headed by Gabin’s Godfather-like Vittorio Manalese. He agrees to Sartet’s scheme to secure a stockpile of jewels by hijacking a plane, but cannot control the felon’s newly liberated libido, which will prove—as in Rififi—to be the heist’s undoing. Thrilling twists and turns along the way are accompanied by Ennio Morricone’s springy soundtrack, providing the tense action with a lightness that seems nearly deceptive by the film’s final implosion. – Brittany Gravely