Customer Reviews

Le Samourai (Criterion Collection)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

A real masterpiece! Mr. Melville managed very well to show and prove his exceptional talent in this 1967 production. Everything about this "film-noir" is outstanding: Great story line, remarkable casting, wonderful acting, superb cinematography... The events take place within a period of less then three days and the focus of the film is a highly narcissistic contract killer. His "cool" demeanor and his approach to his work very well depicted. The secondary characters of the story are also well-chosen and they do their parts nicely.

In addition, the "Special Features" of this Criterion print are invaluable; I think they desrve to be watched --after the film is viewed of course...

Cool, austere and haunting - this is the real deal - a genuine French masterpiece.

Jef Costello is a hired assasin who makes somewhat of a blunder on one of his jobs. He allows a witness to clearly see him and later gets arrested. For some strange reason, the person who clearly saw him leaving the scene of the crime refuses to identify him in a police line up. Jef also makes up an elaborate alibi to "prove" that he wasn't at the crime scene when the murder occured. After the police release him, things get a bit complicated because Jef has a weakness for a woman piano player and the people who hired him turn on him.

The main character makes this a very good film, but just doesn't come across as convincing as some of the other assasins I've seen on film.

This film has the indelible reputation of being a classic French film Noir; as being the inspiration for John Woo's THE KILLER, and Jim Jarmusch's GHOST DOG, and certainly influenced Jean Reno in THE PROFESSIONAL. It, in turn, was most certainly influenced by Alan Ladd's premiere role as "Raven" in THIS GUN FOR HIRE. Director Jean-Pierre Melville was a veteran of several French crime films. This one was easily his best. He died six years later. It was released in America in 1972 under the title, THE GODSON.

This is a very dark tale of a meticulous assassin living very secluded and alone in a rundown apartment house; inconspicuous, hiding in plain sight, a Spartan existance, a monk's simplicity and pure dedication to vocational choice. There is only one spark of life in the greyness of his domicile...a small bird in a dirty cage. This is a color film, but most of it is shot in deep shadows, and at night; all gray and black imagery. And in that sense, it does have a real Noir feel to it.

This film has been so well received, and is held in such high esteem, somehow I, as a first time viewer, expected more from it. The lexicon of assassin crime films is lengthy, so one longed to see something new, fresh, and original; something connected to samurai or yakuza roots. There was the establishment of a pervading sense of doom, of fatalistic events, as we watched Alain Delon as Jef Costello maneuvering himself into tragedy.

But for me, the primary weakness of this film was Delon himself. His matinee good looks, his Bogart-like raincoat, his smooth short brimmed fedora, his strained attempts at coolness...all seemed wrong, and off-center. I needed to see toughness, not the stiffness and effeminate posing. I needed to see Yves Montand or Gerard Depardieu as Costello. Someone with a lived-in face, deeply lined and chiseled, and life's weariness in his sagging shoulders, and real violence springing from a killer's sinews...not the awkward shuffling of Delon's pretend gangster. I needed to see the propensity for inflicting pain behind his eyes, terrible anger predicated on a misspent life. Death. Death in his eyes, countless killings from that moment spread clear to the horizon, too many to count, the loss of even the need to count; the coldness of a professional mechanic, the icy blank stare of a zero guilt psychopath. I think I wanted to see Costello sitting around in a dirty t-shirt cleaning his weapons lovingly, like Bruce Willis in THE LAST MAN STANDING, or Christopher Walken in THE DOGS OF WAR. I longed to witness the bushido connection to Costello...but instead with Delon one received a vacuous state of disbelief. There was no whisper of Kurasawa, no Mifune stare, no Nakadai burst of lethal violence...there was just handsome Alain Delon posing for posters, standing stiffly in shadows, and prancing in and out of stolen Citroens.

Nathalie Delon as Jane LeGrange had some good moments. Married to Alain Delon, this was her film debut. Her scene with the wily police superintendent, played by Roger Fradet, was very good. Her characters inherent toughness, this beautiful woman caught up in the greasy world of call girls and gangsters, mere inches from descent into prostitution, came through clearly; also what appeared to be geniune affection for the rake Costello. Fradet, as the Chief Inspector, was appropriately driven, prissy, and likewise meticulous; creating an excellent counterpoint to Costello. Cathy Rosier, as Valerie the jazz pianist, hit all the right notes; kind of a black French Keely Smith. Her decision not to finger Costello, whom she clearly recognized, seemed to imply her deeper involvement in the complexity of the murderous plot.

This film has been called," beautiful, sad, and very very cool,"..le crime hot, I guess. In this genre, the music itself was a bit pedestrian. It needed some Quincy Jones score to punctuate the action. There were a lovely bunch of triple crosses and plot twists. But it was never clear if Valerie's name was on Costello's second contract. When Costello returned to her apartment in search of her, and he encountered the mid-level boss, and eliminated him in reprisal...was this a random act, or the first faltering steps he was taking on his walk to doom? Watching the bird in the cage at Costello's rathole, molting and dying, seemed an effective visual symbol, keying us to the killer's plight.

One other problem for me was the gendarmes seemed to be able to dog Costello's tracks, bug his apartment, and monitor his movements a little too easily. This was supposed to be a tale of a hardened killer, a professional who thrived on danger. It was a bit too easy to snare him. Did Costello know that he was walking into a trap at the nightclub? Perhaps. He did unload his pistol before strolling in. Was his life, his very existence, so without meaning that he would throw it away without exacting the full measure of punishment on his betrayers? Perhaps. In the film's final flickers, we know we have seen a classic. It is only too bad that it had an empty ineffective heart in its chest.