Movie Review: The Sicilian Clan, starring Jean Gabin, Alain Delon, and Lino Ventura (1969)

The three stars of The Sicilian Clan: Alain Delon, Jean Gabin, and Lino Ventura.

The highly entertaining 1969 caper film The Sicilian Clan stars three icons of European cinema: Jean Gabin, Alain Delon, and Lino Ventura. The Sicilian Clan was directed by Henri Verneuil, who had directed all three of these stars before: Delon and Gabin in Any Number Can Win, and Ventura in Greed in the Sun, which also starred French icon Jean-Paul Belmondo. Delon and Ventura had previously starred together in 1967’s The Last Adventure.  

Delon plays Roger Sartet, a criminal who escapes from the police thanks to the help of Gabin’s crime family. Delon’s mesmerizing acting is on display from the beginning, especially in the scene at the beginning as Sartet’s history is read aloud by the magistrate. Delon does so much acting with only his eyes—you just have to watch his face and his eyes. If you’re a fan of Delon’s handsome looks, you’ll enjoy the chase scene where he makes an escape, but doesn’t have time to put his shirt on, just throwing his sport coat over his shoulders.  

Jean Gabin brings instant gravitas and authority to his role as the head of the Manalese crime family. He’s fantastic, and there’s a great part in the making-of documentary that describes a scene in which we see the control that Gabin’s character wields over his family. The dialogue was whittled down and whittled down, until what you see in the finished film is just a line or two—minimal dialogue for the maximum effect.  

Lino Ventura is exceptional as the police investigator Le Goff. Ventura had such a wonderful character actor face, and like Gabin, he inhabits his character naturally and easily. Le Goff is trying to quit smoking, so he spends much of the movie with an unlit cigarette in his mouth, a funny touch. When Le Goff finally lights a cigarette in the second half of the film, I almost expected him to say, ala Lloyd Bridges in Airplane! “Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit smoking.”  

The Sicilian Clan is a stylish and smart movie, and there are many memorable elements in it, including Ennio Morricone’s infectiously catchy score. But there are moments with no music—such as Sartet’s escape from a police van. There’s no music, no dialogue during this sequence. You just sit and watch, and the viewer creates the tension. It’s tremendously effective.  

The Sicilian Clan was filmed in two versions: French-language and English-language. The film had a distribution deal with 20th Century Fox, and Darryl F. Zanuck demanded an English version of the movie to justify the costly budget. I assumed that only the sequences with dialogue were filmed in both French and English, but the making-of documentary tells us that the entire movie was filmed in both versions! That seems like a waste of money to me, but whatever. Even though Gabin and Ventura both spoke English, their voices were dubbed for the English-language version. Delon’s English was good enough that he was undubbed for the English-language version.  

The lead female role is played by Irina Demick, who was discovered by Darryl F. Zanuck, and cast in the 1962 all-star D-Day epic The Longest Day. (Zanuck and Demick also had a romantic relationship.) Demick’s character has some romantic tension with Delon’s character, and their scenes together have a palpable electricity.  

The Sicilian Clan is an exciting, thrilling caper film with a fantastic cast, and I’d highly recommend it.