Director: Nadine Trintignant
Screenplay: Nadine Trintignant
Starring: Jean-Louis Trintignant, Robert Hossein, Giorgia Moll, Bernadette Lafont, Florinda Bolkan
Country: France
Running Time: 90 minutes
Year: 1969
Crime Thief is an odd movie that goes at pains to portray a sense of ennui experienced by the main character. Unfortunately, this mirrored my own feelings while watching this ponderous movie, which didn’t manage to capture enough intrigue to sustain its slow-burn 90 minute runtime.
The character piece is carried by its star Jean-Louis Trintignant, known for a raft of European movies, including Il sorpasso, The Conformist, A Man and a Woman. It seems director, and wife, Nadine Trintignant also had misgivings in the movie, according to the experts on the disc extras, who felt it was incomplete.
Indicator is releasing the 1969 psychological drama on Bluray for the first time in the UK and the US. The feature is presented with a 4K restoration from the original negative and its original mono audio with new and improved English translation subtitles. The package includes four interviews which amount to around two hours of extra content, along with a limited-edition booklet.
Indicator describes the plot as follows: ‘Nadine Trintignant (Défense de savoir) directs her husband, Jean-Louis Trintignant (Merci la vie), in Crime Thief (Le Voleur de crimes), a complex examination of obsession and alienation.
‘When disaffected everyman Jean (Trintignant) witnesses the suicide of a young woman, he decides to anonymously claim that he has murdered her. Leaving his family behind, he becomes consumed by his own delusions, descending into neurosis as the lines between fantasy and reality become increasingly blurred.’
The film’s greatest achievement is creating a feeling of disorientation; it keeps you questioning how reliable the main character is as a narrator. As Jean becomes more and more complicit, he seems to convince himself he was the killer and as the viewer, you’re led to question the reality of the matter as contradicting flashbacks appear.
There were at times it felt vaguely like Christopher Nolan’s Memento (2000) as Jean, the fantasist, continues further down this isolating path, attempting to piece together the reality, himself. Trintignant portrays the sense of being a loner and paranoia adeptly. It’s an excellent performance that shows the titillation of the perverse.
Where this film really benefits from the Bluray transfer is the elegant 60s which are on-show on the screen. There is a vibrancy to the picture, mirrored by the contemporary fashion, which keeps one particularly striking red dress in mind as it contrasts the grey urban city. The score is very effective, with the low hum of disquieting bass punctuating the scene, Jean’s piercing voiceover and the a mix of whispering and organ music creating an increasing sense of paranoia.
Film:
Special Features
- Nadine Trintignant, Filmmaker and Head of the Clan (2026): Aurore Renaut, film critic and expert on the subject of women in film, discusses the filmmaker and her work
- A Look Back at the Lucien Léger Case (2026): writer Philippe Jaenada explores the film’s inspiration
- Self-Portrait of a True Crime Story (2026): critical appreciation of Crime Thief by filmmaker Roland-Jean Charna
- The Revolt of Jean Girod, a Man Without Qualities (2026): writer Sébastien Le Pajolec examines Jean-Louis Trintignant’s character
- Image gallery: promotional and publicity materials
- New and improved English translation subtitles
- Limited edition exclusive booklet including a new essay on the film, an archival piece on Nadine Trintignant’s early career and Crime Thief’s place within it, an overview of critical responses, and film credits
- UK premiere on Blu-ray
- Limited edition of 4,000 copies for the UK and US
Each of these interviews are presented in a similar way with the subject facing the camera. It’s fairly dry and dense. If you really liked the film, then you will get a lot out of it as the interviews serve to contextualise the film by detailing France at the time, looking at a similar case, the film’s production history, and the perception of Nadine as a filmmaker at the time, and how that’s changed.
Special Features:
Indicator is releasing Crime Thief on Blu-ray on 21 September, 2026.