A review I posted months ago...
Le Samouraï(1967/Melville/France)
“There is no greater solitude than that of the samurai, unless it be that of the tiger in the jungle.” –Book of Bushido, as quoted in the opening credits of
Le Samouraï 
Tarantino fans will probably have heard of Jean-Pierre Melville. If you haven’t, it’s important to know this French director has influenced Tarantino immeasurably (not to mention many others, including John Woo).
After months of searching for this almost lost film, I acquired a copy from an acquaintance whose personal film library is enviable to say the very least. I’ve watched it three times in three days last week, and, had I not given it back to him the other night, I would have watched it at least twice more too.
I have watched a lot of excellent films lately, but seldom does a film enter my Top 20 on a first viewing. Not too long ago,
The Seventh Seal (1957/Bergman) had an extraordinary affect on me, and way back,
Don’t Look Now (1973/Roeg) affected me in a different way but just as powerfully. Now it is time for this remarkable French thriller to step up onto the podium (if that isn’t too bold a thing for such an low key film to do) and relish its emphatic praise I am about to pile on it.
Jef Costello is a lonely hitman who lives by his own strict codes of conduct. Hired to kill a nightclub owner, he sets himself up the perfect alibi. But when he is caught exiting the nightclub, having killed his victim, he becomes a prime suspect in a murder case. While falling in love with the key witness who fails to identify him, he strives to stay one step ahead of the police and his employers, who think he will rat them out.
The film opens with a long shot of Jef’s apartment, the photography looking almost like a black-and-white film in its muted greyness. Billows of smoke come from the bed, on which Jef lies, far from the camera. As the credits appear on the screen, there is silence, until, once they’re finished, the camera tracks and zooms quickly, disorientating the viewer. Clad in a cream Mack and grey hat (an unforgettable image I can tell you!), Jef leaves the apartment with a look in the mirror, and goes to work.
The opening fifteen minutes, and the whole film itself, scarcely has any dialogue. The body language, subject matter, acting and directing simply don’t need it. This is an existentialist
noir of the highest order. Critics say it is Melville’s definitive take on American gangster movies, but this is a ludicrously unjust statement; the film stands alone as itself without needing any comparison to Hollywood.
I could go on about the meaning of the film, and how I’ve interpreted it, but if you haven’t seen it (which I suspect many of you haven’t), it’ll pass over you. Instead, I’d prefer to discuss the cinematic technique; the solid visuals, the delightfully haunting photography, the beautiful score, the deadpan, the profound coolness.
Melville’s taut direction is meticulous throughout; every shot and sequence is delivered with high aesthetic value. Directorially speaking, the definitive moment comes when Jef is about to rendezvous for his payoff, and we cut briefly to a handheld shot of a train speeding by. The sound of a train soaring past foreshadows a certain assassination scene five years later in Coppola’s
The Godfather. With that one simple cut the scene is hurled into an immeasurable amount of tension; as Jef nears his man, you know
something is to happen. But Melville, with two close ups, makes us wait, and when the action does happen, the camera crabs and pans away rapidly, out of control, the whole shot captured only from behind a fence.
Equally as tense is the silent bugging scene, in which two cops (who are subtly portrayed as immoral, unethical vultures) bug Jef’s apartment at night. Their fastidious approach is perfectly detailed in Melville’s slow, methodical pacing of the scene, not unlike the feel in Coppola’s
The Conversation (1974).
Henri Decaë’s muted blues and greys seem all the more appropriate with such a
noir as this. The cinematography is almost monochrome in its dim, albeit oddly rousing depiction of Paris. François de Roubaix’s score compliments the photography and mise-en-scene wonderfully. The moment at which Jef steps out of the police station, with Roubaix’s delightfully cool crescendo of music, is typical of the film’s deadpan standpoint.
Alain Delon plays the hitman with beautiful understatement. It doesn't dominate the film, especially on a first viewing. There simply isn’t room for him to act; the narrative and character he plays don’t need it. But on repeated viewings, you begin to appreciate just how well he holds the screen with his stone eyes. Sitting on his bed staring down the barrel of a gun, his expression is as powerful and focussed as ever an actor has produced. There’s a small moment toward the end of the film, after escaping his tail in the Metro, when he gets into a car and coolly works his way through his set of keys, trying each one in the ignition. Here Delon portrays a unique balance of imperturbable desperation, and his hand gesture, hesitant and determined, just before he tries the car door: Fantastic.
François Périer, who plays the police chief intent on catching Costello, is a brilliant contrast in acting style. The scene in which he unethically tries to twist Delon’s alibi girl is chiefly notable: the way he calmly suggests a way to “help” her, looking away for a moment as he does so. The rest of the cast never stand out, but never put a foot wrong either. Cathy Rosier has many uplifting moments, looking highly convincing as she plays some excellent French jazz on the piano (apologies to her if she
is actually playing the piano).
From start to finish, Melville’s
Le Samouraï is a unique experience and one which you can visit again and again (and
again, if you’re me J), with much to say about masculinity and a life of solitude; of a man driven towards Nemesis by the supreme, ever-conquering powers of Fate. Neither before nor since has cinema been as simultaneously cool, fashionable, tense, meticulous, or poetic as this.
Thanks for reading.
Mick
