Rouve revisits "heist of the century"
After a four-week shoot in France, the team of actor Jean-Paul Rouve’s feature debut Sans arme, ni haine, ni violence ("Without Weapons, Hatred or Violence”) has moved to Portugal for another six weeks of filming.
The biopic on the eccentric thief Albert Spaggiari, the brains behind the "heist of a century”, is about his break-in of the safety deposit boxes of a Nice bank in 1976 through the city’s sewers.
The film stars the director (2003 César for Best Supporting Actor for Monsieur Batignole and highly acclaimed in Podium and as Edith Piaf’s father in La Vie en Rose [+see also:
trailer
film profile]) and Alice Taglioni (The Valet [+see also:
trailer
film profile]). Gilles Lellouche, Maxime Leroux and Gérard Depardieu also put in an appearance.
Written by Rouve and Benoît Graffin (Priceless [+see also:
trailer
film profile]), the story uses flashbacks to recount Spaggiari’s unusual life, which inspired José Giovanni’s 1982 film The Sewers of Paradise.
A former paratrooper during the Indochine War and a photographer of nationalist movements such as the OAS, Spaggiari (Rouve) organised a hold-up of the Société générale bank in the city centre during the weekend of July 17-19, 1976. Police officers discovered a message on a wardrobe ("without hatred, without violence and without weapons”) and learned of the robbers’ astonishing getaway through an eight-metre tunnel, the sewers of Nice and the underground river of Paillon.
Quickly arrested, Spaggiari escaped by jumping out the window of a judge’s office and began a 12-year life of hiding, which took him to South America but did not deter him from meeting people, giving interviews and attracting media attention. He died in 1989 at the age of 57 in exile in Italy. Taglioni plays the thief’s partner, while Lellouche features as a journalist.
Produced by Pauline Duhault for Elia Films in association with Vertigo Films, Sans arme, ni haine, ni violence, which is being described as a crime comedy, received co-production and pre-sales funding from M6 and was also co-produced by Studio 37 (a subsidiary of the France Télécom group). The French shoot began with three weeks in Paris (two weeks of exteriors and one in the studio) before continuing in Nice for a week.
Mars Films, a new distribution outfit helmed by Stéphane Célérier, will release the film on French screens in April 2008.
(Translated from French)
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