Any Number Can Win

Any Number Can Win (1963)

Mélodie en sous-sol

Don't tell the ending...nobody'll ever believe you!

Charles, fresh out of jail, rejects his wife's plan for a quiet life of bourgeois respectability. He enlists a former cell mate, Francis, to assist him in pulling off one final score, a carefully planned assault on the vault of a Cannes casino.

Date of release
1963-03-19
TMDB
7.2 / 10 (223)
Runtime
2h 2m
Genres
Crime
Director
Henri Verneuil

Casting

Interesting facts

Any Number Can Win is a 1963 French crime drama film directed by Henri Verneuil. The film is based on the novel The Big Grab by Zekial Marko.

Production

Screenwriter Michel Audiard came upon the novel The Big Grab by American author Zekial Marko (using the pseudonym John Trinian) through its French publisher Série noire, and suggested adapting the film to producer Jacques Bar. The French-Italian production received significant backing from MGM, who released it in the United States and other territories.

The main role of Charles was always intended for Jean Gabin, but the supporting role of Francis was initially planned for Jean-Louis Trintignant. Alain Delon heard about the project and lobbied Bar for the role, saying, "I want to make this film".

Delon offered a compromise, taking the film's distribution rights in certain countries instead of a straight salary. Because this had never been done before in France, this was known as "Delon's method". The gamble paid off well, with Jean Gabin later claiming that Delon earned ten times more money than him as a result. He reportedly made $125,000 from the Japanese rights alone.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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