LE SAMOURAI - the most influential gangster film ever made
September 1st 2010 14:06
THE BIRTH OF COOL
Le Samourai
Jean-Pierre Melville’s 1967 classic film Le Samourai stars Alain Delon (The Leopard, L'eclisse, Purple Noon) as Jef Costello, the most inscrutable of all hitmen. How do you begin to discuss a film so revered, so often analysed, so often copied. Countless films that have taken on the hit man genre have used Le Samourai as their reference point. Endlessly imitated but never surpassed, Alain Delon taught the world how to play this kind of role. A film that I have seen probably too many times, I can only try to do justice in discussing Le Samourai’s rare perfection.
Jean-Pierre Melville was a French film maker who was one of the few natives in France to influence the French New Wave - the film movement which would change the direction of cinema through out the world. Some of Melville’s other films included Le Cercle Rouge, Army Of Shadows and Bob Le Flambeur, but for Melville and film star Alain Delon, possibly the biggest film star in world cinema at the time, this is their most treasured and revered film. Delon, who said in an interview, “This is the best film I have ever done”, is merely making an elegant under statement.
Alain Delon as Jef Costello
We open on a lifeless, dim bedroom. It takes a few seconds for us to realize there’s someone in front of us on that bed, he’s that tranquil. Jef Costello (Delon), in a trench coat and fedora has a beautiful stillness to his entire being - like a beautiful angel of death, completely non-reactive, a way of being that establishes the new form of uber-cool in cinema that no one had seen. Jef has an ease to his detachment, a grace one can only admire. He steps out, onto the street, a sly glance of his surroundings reinforce his fine measures. His stillness is hypnotic, as he goes to painful, intricate lengths of perfection in what he does.
He starts a car that isn’t his. His steely eyes and methodical manner demonstrate a man in check, someone who seems closer to playing a game of poker rather than being payed to kill someone. He drives this car to an old dingy garage. As he drives in, a mechanic waits for him, no words are exchanged between them. The mechanic efficiently changes the number plate and hands him a gun for his job. Through out the film, the stripped down minimalist iconography of Film Noir reveals a unique flourish. The term less is more has never been so relevant as it is right here.
He arrives at a lounge bar, entering an office, the first lines of dialogue are finally uttered as he meets his target.
Bar Owner: Who are you?
Jeff Costello: Doesn't matter.
Bar Owner: What do you want?
Jeff Costello: To kill you.
Melville, the director has found the equal counterpart to his perfect and magnificently precise film making. Le Samourai is minimalist story telling. For the first ten minutes there is not one word uttered, as Jef goes to make the kill - one small unexpected detail will change everything for him.
Beginning in a stripped down style, with it’s story telling, detail and acting, Le Samourai invents a new form of gangster film, a unique cinematic perfection using as few strokes as possible. A deceptively simple story, executed elegantly and masterfully without breaking a sweat. By the time we are further into the film there is the revelation we experience by noticing how intricately built up all the details of this film have become in comparison to it’s elegantly over-simplistic set up.
Delon never speaks unless he absolutely has to answer someone. You could call this a gentleman’s gangster film, one that keeps it’s poise and influences everything that follows it as a result. Le Samourai simultaneously works on two levels at once.
The first level is Delon adjusting his Fedora with delicate precision, the symbol of masculinity and fashion, a film and actor that sets a cinematic vogue, destined to be emulated in the films of John Woo, Tarantino, Friedkin, Coens, Johnnie To, Jarmusch and countless others. Delon’s performance and face, which never betrays an emotion, is the final word in cool. Le Samourai’s fascinating style and palette of greys and blues, as well as the camera’s economic tracking movements are an example of the subject matter being purely incidental. The execution of the story seems like a character in of itself, as we witness Melville giving birth to modern noir.
The second level is key, where Melville uses character - NOT actions, to create suspense. Costello has a code of honour he believes in, while working. Ethics which he follows that tie in with eastern culture, linking to the film’s title. Costello is ready to die at any point, extricating himself as much as possible from other people in order to be able to do this inhumane line of work. This is where I believe I can add my own original two cents to a film that’s already been over analysed. Delon, on the surface, may seem like he is the height of cool - but that is the most superficial understanding of the film. Costello’s coolness is closer to a child who has no concept of how one person can affect another. He can only behave this way because of his alienation from human contact. This suits him well. But when one small unexpected encounter happens to him, it affects his instincts in a big way, and that bit of uncertainty leads to a completely different outcome for him.
At the end of Le Samourai it is ultimately the execution and style of this film that lingers. The stripped down approach that Melville takes towards the material. It really feels like pure cinema and it shaped the majority of the genre to this day, from Dirty Harry, Pulp Fiction, Dead Man, No Country for Old Men and hundreds of others, but the film experience it self in Le Samourai has never been topped.
Make sure you stay far away from the bastardised and butchered, English dubbed, American version. Stick only with the sub titled original version.
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Comment by Deni
Abstract Magick
Cinema Herald
Comment by ShaunK
Screen Adventure
It's definitely up there for me too.
Comment by Deni
Abstract Magick
Cinema Herald
Comment by Bryn
Horrorphile
Great review.
I own the Criterion myself.
Not amongst my very favourite gangster movies, but masterful nevertheless.
Comment by David O'Connell
Screen Fanatic
Comment by Always Eighteen
Always Eighteen
Comment by JohnDoe
Film & TV on DVD
Delon is sublime, the Direction is poetic and the script refined majesty.
I have actually written 3 drafts of a review for this about a year ago but never posted it because it failed to communicate my passion adequately. You can take that as praise too
Comment by Mountain Fog
Infognito
Screen Trek
QUOTE ME NO QUOTES!
love the frogs!
cheers
fog
Comment by ShaunK
Screen Adventure
David - great to hear you saw Le Cercle Rouge and as over the top as it may sound, it hurts me to hear that a film connoisseur such as you hasn't seen this film yet. I hope you get to see it soon, it's remarkable.
Always 18 - hey there, thanks for reading, hope to hear from you again, enjoy the film.
john Doe - Thanks for that compliment, means alot and I'm happy to say that I think I succeeded in finding the voice for this film in my review.
Fog - "AND A GOOD DAY TO YOU SIR!" - thanks for reading