Not a fan of this one, Mark, it has been hyped a bit because the director (Michel Deville) went on to a distinguished career (though he was apparently the replacement director for this one, elevated up from assistant director). For a more interesting work of his around the same time, look for LUCKY JO (1964), where Eddie Constantine proves he can really act.

When our shows have touched the 1950s, we've stayed away from more generic heist films that started to proliferate after the GRISBI-RIFIFI-BOB LE FLAMBEUR troika, focusing on the other genres and one-offs (see QUAI DE GRENELLE, for example) that occured during the decade. Those, and what I term "the last wave," films that feature adaptations from significant crime writers--some highly lauded (Boileau-Narcejac, Frederic Dard), others more sketchy (James Hadley Chase) but whose stories are elevated by the director and screenwriters (and, ultimately, by the actors as well.

Two of the more interesting "heist" films put out in the same year as UNE BALLE are:

--L'ETRANGE M. STEVE, with future superstars Jeanne Moreau and Lino Ventura, but focused on the strange relationship between timid bank clark Georges (Philippe Lemaire, who played the rotter in Melville's WHEN YOU READ THIS LETTER) and the smooth but deadly gangster Steve (Armand Mestral), where Georges is honey-trapped by Moreau and blackmailed into a life of crime, with other interesting complications (and a scene that parodies some of the action in BOB LE FLAMBEUR);

--JUSQU'AU DERNIER (UNTIL THE LAST ONE), which is fully an "aftermath of the heist" film, showing what happens when one of the robbers (Raymond Pellegrin) tries to take off with the loot. Jeanne Moreau is here again, as the heroine this time, trying (in vain) to make Pellegrin see the error of his ways. It's also a "carny noir," which adds a lot of color to what gets increasingly grim.

Both are infinitely preferable to UNE BALLE, and we've screened both of these, with STEVE actually making the cut in our LA series, which was much more conservative in its contents as dictated by the powers-that-used-to-be at the American Cinematheque.