The Film Forum in New York recently completed a five week run of “French Crime Wave” films, bringing in a goldmine of “film noir & thrillers, 1937 – 2000.” This incredible list of almost forty films was headlined on the website with an image of Alain Delon from his role in Le Cercle Rouge (1970). Personally, I would have favored another film by Jean-Pierre Melville, also starring Delon; Le Samouraï (1967). I’m going to guess that Le Samouraï wasn’t included because of rights issues. The Telluride Film Festival premiered a restored print in 1996, the film was then distributed by Arificial Eye in 1997, and then it was later picked up by New Yorker Films – but they ultimately lost the rights as well. Home viewers, however, can take comfort in the fact that the Criterion Collection gave it a dvd release in 2005.

Synopsis:

Jeff Costello (Alain Delon) is a solitary figure, a perfectionist, and an assassin. He embarks on an assignment, steals a car, gets new license plates, a gun, and then performs a hit at a nightclub. This act is witnessed by Valerie (Cathy Rosier), the nightclub pianist. Costello is rounded up and put in a line-up. What follows are a series of beautifully staged diversions, betrayals, cat-and-mouse games, and a final confrontation that provides an incredibly elegant visual coda. The mechanics of the story and genre allow Melville to fuse his love of early American crime films with the Parisian landscape. But what elevates Le Samouraï to art is Melville’s role in shaping the film on every level, as director, writer, editor, art-designer, and more. The fact that he was involved on everything down to the selection of wallpaper and that he allows the film to progress with minimal dialogue is reminiscent of another cinematic giant who was famously known for strongly pronounced aesthetic views and perfectionism; Stanley Kubrick (whose 2001: A Space Odyssey also eschewed dialogue in favor of visual poetry).

About the director:

Born Jean-Pierre Grumbach to Jewish parents in 1917 Paris, he became an ardent cinephile early on, watching up to five films a day. Then came World War II (he adapted the name Melville in honor of the American Novelist Herman Melville, after joining the French Resistance).

Melville was conscripted into the French army in 1937 and, following the German occupation of France in 1940, was evacuated with sections of his regiment to Britain. He returned to southern France in 1941 and in 1942 joined the Resistance. From then until 1945 Melville saw military action in North Africa, Italy and France and spent some time in London as part of the Free French Movement.

While the ever-enigmatic director revealed little about his experiences in the Resistance, these years provided Melville with background material for three of his most important movies—Le Silence de la mer (The silence of the Sea [1949]), Léon Morin, prêtre (Leon Morin, Priest [1961]) and L’Armée des ombres (The Army of Shadows [1969])—the latter, in my view, his best film. (Richard Phillips, excerpted from the World Socialist Web Site. For full article see link: http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/aug2006/sff8-a15.shtml)

From 1947 until his death by heart attack in 1973, Melville would direct 13 features, half being crime films that were denounced by some critics for purveying “Hollywood decadence” and by Cahiers du Cinema as being “too commercial.” But his influence on the French New Wave and many contemporary directors (ie: Martin Scorsese, Michael Mann, John Woo, Quentin Tarantino, Johnny To) left an indelible mark.

About the protagonist:

Before looking him up in Wikipedia I have to admit that my knowledge of Alain Delon was limited to a handful of films I’ve personally seen him in (Rocco and His Brothers, Plein Soleil, L’eclisse, The Leopard, Le Samouraï, Spirits of the Dead, Le Cercle rouge, and Scorpio). Also with this came a few salacious details that came with the territory of his being a womanizer who hobknobbed with real gangsters. I’m not one to make a judgement call here – he truly was an impossibly good-looking guy (sometimes compared to James Dean and “even called the male Brigitte Bardot”). Not surprisingly, he had no problems spreading his oats; he was engaged to Romy Schneider, had an affair with Nico (she gave birth to a son), was married to Nathalie Barthélemy (they had a son and later divorced), and he had two kids with Rosalie van Breemen. Acting-wise he won a Best Actor César Award for Notre histoire (1984), but this was followed by a string of box office failures that culminated in Delon giving up acting in 1997 (with some exceptions – including some titles still in the pipeline). His name clearly still has currency in other realms, as Wikipedia notes that:

Since the formation of a perfume label in his name, Delon has had a variety of products sold under his name including clothing, eyewear, stationery and cigarettes. Delon’s sunglasses brand became particularly popular in Hong Kong after actor Chow Yun Fat wore them in the 1986 crime film A Better Tomorrow (as well as two sequels). Delon reportedly wrote a letter thanking Fat for helping the sunglasses sell out in the region.

A final existential note – spoilers included:

The poster for Le Samouraï used by Artificial Eye’s re-release in 1996 picks an image from the film that resonated enough with me that I framed it and put it in my office. (You can partially see me in the reflection above.) In some ways, it seems like a ridiculously simple image: Delon dominates the frame while a gun is pointed at this face. How many movie posters use the face of a star and add a gun to the equation? Way too many. In fact, it’s a lazy and stale advertising cliche. But this poster is different for several reasons. It’s drained of color, except for some words highlighted in red, and instead of being in black-and-white it has a metallic and blueish sheen. More importantly, the look on Delon’s face as he stares death in the face shows no emotion. Why is this one of only a few posters in my office? Because when I’m having a bad day at the office that image speaks to me.  Richard Phillips makes an observation that I feel is partially correct:

In fact Melville, who always claimed to reject religion and ideology, had developed his own variation on Christianity’s “original sin”. Humanity was essentially doomed, he claimed, and all it could do was stoically face this dark reality and try to soldier on. (Richard Phillips)

Although I can understand Phillips reaction to Melville’s brand of stoicism as being pessimistic and a turn-off, half of my genetic stock is Norwegian, and Norse mythology talks of Ragnarök, which is a Scandanavian version of Armageddon, but one in which the world and all its gods are destroyed. Not only that, but this destruction is something the gods know will come – it’s inevitable. And unlike Christian myths, in Norse mythology evil will triumph, but (here’s the kink…) the gods know evil will triumph and do the right thing anyway! This despite no heavenly rewards or 72 virgins or whatever else. (Writer’s note: most of my Norse mythology comes from Marvel comics and one college class that I was always late in attending. Ergo, you probably know more about this than I do and your comments are welcome.)

Ultimatately it may be a bit of a stretch to assign a Norse characteristic of altruism in the face of certain doom to Delon’s charecter in Le Samouraï since, after all, his code of honor as an assassin is wrapped up in the rather un-godly business of killing people. But the reason it resonates with me, I feel, is because Melville is working with tropes. He openly despises gangsters as the lowest of the low, and yet clearly he loved the crime genre for the flexibility it provided in working out bigger themes. And the bigger theme here is that of being honest to yourself and your destiny.

At bottom is a still from an alternate ending for Le Samouraï, one that Melville decided not to use because it was a bit over-the-top, and too theatrical. Still, it makes it clear that Delon’s character has the last laugh because he’s in on the joke – and isn’t that ultimately reassuring? To paraphrase something David Cronenberg said once at the Telluride Film Festival when he was there with his film Spider (2002); any film, no matter how morbid, is ultimately an act of faith because, regardless of your message, when you pull on your own energy, and that of others, to create something new to introduce into this world, you are, essentially, engaging in, and part of, creation.