No. 82 of 101 Great Films Le Samourai

1966  Le Samourai

Directed by Jean-Pierre Melville



Alain Delon & Jean-Pierre Melville



I really like Jean-Pierre Melville

Maybe more that I like his films, he is a home schooled movie geek

Before WWII, Melville watched everything he could at the  cinema during  the war, he fought for Free France, including participating in the invasion of Italy, and  the liberation of Lyon.

              After the war at the age of 30 he tried to make movies but every studio in France turned him down so he decided to create his own studio, and thus the model for the new wave  movement was born.

But except for the way he made his films, Melville movies have little to do with the the French new wave movement,  he was a precise director mapping out shots, and following a theme, and a direction.

Melville born, Jean-Pierre Grumbach was a Quentin Tarantino before Quentin, he loved movies and watched as many as he could, especially the Hollywood cinema of the 30s, and the silent films of W.S. Van Dyke, using all that he watched to help him make his films a decade later.

 His first film was about the French resistance that he finance  and distributed all on his own. His next film was an adaptation of Jean Cocteau’s 1920 novel Les  Enfants Terribles,  both  received positive press, and Melville's career was set.

In 1967 with a bigger budget which along with his artistic freedom, allowed him to make a Crime Drama classic,
 Le Samourai,
with French superstar, Alain Delon.

Le Samourai, is about a good  a hard boiled crime drama as anything that Hollywood or Dashett Hammett ever created.

The big difference he his hard boiled caper, which was a bold choice by Melville, was the amazing use of non- dialog. In hard boiled world of Hollywood, dialog was just as important as the action, but in Le Samourai, the films goes minutes with out words spoken, which just creates an almost other worldly soundtrack, with ambient noise, including a criping bird and the tenseness of trying to find a key.

 Melville is a master with making a location  an character in his films, some  of this comes from his early works shooting on the streets on the sly, but its more than that,
He understands that we don't live in tightly controlled spaces with perfect lightly,   we live in a world full of people, buildings, nosies and just plain stuff, and sometimes you can't control any of it~

And maybe just as important,  at least in Samourai, is his affection for Paris, its almost as much a love letter to the city as a crime drama film.

And this love and understanding of Paris helps make this a top notch Crime Drama that includes one the screens best surveillance chase scenes.




But even with all that going for Melville's 1966 film, Francois Perier might just be the best thing in it.
Perier, a veteran of the stage and screen, along with Melville's insight and leadership, created one unforgettable police officer.

Were Delon  character says very little  Perier's character talks 90 miles a minute, and seems almost omnipresent.

       

Unfortunately  Melville died at the young age of 56 after only making 13 films, as I said in the beginning I’m not sure if I like him more than his films, but thinking about the 13 films of which I’ve seen 7,

All seven are pretty damn good, as is Jean-Pierre Melville.

 

 

 

Video exhibit for Le Samourai