Flick Story (Flic Story) (translated)

Flic Story is a 1975 French-Italian crime thriller directed by Jacques Deray, whose screenplay by Deray and Alphonse Boudard adapts the 1973 autobiographical book by former police inspector Roger Borniche. The story opens in Paris in 1947: Borniche, an investigator who refuses to carry a weapon and distances himself from his colleagues' reliance on brute force, is ordered to hunt down Emile Buisson, France's most feared gangster, who has fled the psychiatric clinic holding him. Borniche welcomes the case as an opportunity to demonstrate the worth of his more patient, methodical style of police work. Yet catching Buisson proves anything but simple, since the fugitive is busy gunning down informers and men he suspects of betrayal while pulling off audacious hold-ups. Drawn from true events, the manhunt stretched over years and ended with Buisson's execution on 28 February 1956. Alain Delon plays Borniche opposite Jean-Louis Trintignant as Buisson, with Renato Salvatori and Claudine Auger in supporting roles.