Max Et Les Ferrailleurs (aka Max And The Junkmen) (1971)

A rather cold hearted obsessive police detective (Michel Piccoli) is obsessed with bringing criminals to justice whatever the cost. He concocts a complicated plan to lure a group of amateur thieves into robbing a bank just so he can arrest them. He uses a prostitute (Romy Schneider) in his plan by telling her he's a banker but all this leads to a tragic end steeped in irony. Based on the novel by Claude Neron and directed by Claude Sautet. Sautet doesn't seem to get much attention when discussing French directors but he's consistently good with films like CESAR AND ROSALIE, LES CHOSES DE LA VIE and UNE HISTOIRE SIMPLE among others and working often with Romy Schneider. The film starts off appearing to be a police procedural until the relationship between Piccoli's cop and Schneider's hooker comes into play and you understand this is going somewhere but it won't end well. Lovers of film noir should find a lot to like here. Inexplicably the film never got a U.S. release until 40 years later. With Bernard Fresson, Francois Perier and Georges Wilson.