Lo zingaro

This Jose Giovanni effort gives you the strange feeling you are watching two different movies in one:

-The first one is a very conventional gangsters- on- the- lam movie ,with one of the weakest plots Giovanni ever wrote.

-The second one is by far the most interesting,when it shows the gypsy condition,forced to live on the garbage dumps,perpetual outcasts of a society that will never accept them.Delon's looks are eloquent and could have been successful,had he been given adequate support:only the scenes when he meets his people are worthwhile.

The cast is heterogeneous to a fault gathering actors from the forties/fifties (Paul "diaboliques" Meurisse who is here like a ghost from the past),trendy current ones (Delon,and Annie Girardot in an inept part which comes at the most awkward moment) and future glories of the eighties/the present like Bernard Giraudeau (stupidly cast as a young cop and the former lover of a gangster's wife).

The seventies were not a good time for Giovanni,with the exception of "deux hommes dans la ville":his best works remain his early efforts "la loi du survivant" (1967) ,"le rapace" (1968) and "dernier domicile connu" (1969)