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LE SAMOURAI



Jean-Pierre Melville is an auteur who influenced an entire generation of filmmakers that came after and his film Le Samouraϊ was the perfect example of the French New Wave genre. It was shot on location, with a small budget and used only what was available. A perfect example of this style is the apartment of hit man Jef Costello. Empty except for minimal furniture (a single bed, a chair, a dresser) and a solitary birdcage with a small dirty gray bird chirping in it. Jef has a stock of bottled water and cigarettes sitting on a cupboard. The film could have easily been shot in black and white as the color palette was drab and dreary, focusing on icy blues and dull greens, mirroring the lonely life of the solitary killer.

The film remains slow moving, as we spend the first three minutes with Jef lying in his bed before he finally gets up and puts on an overcoat over his black tie and white shirt and then places a fedora on his head before leaving. Minimalist jazz music plays as we watch Jef leave his apartment, slowly and meticulously steal a car, drive it to a small alley where he has the tags changed and he is given a gun by a mechanic. All the while, not a word of dialogue is spoken, not an emotion is shown on the face of the character. The entire opening sequence, at close to ten minutes in length, is calm, cool and precise, setting the template for the movie that follows. It is not until he arrives at his lady friend’s apartment to set up his alibi is the first line of dialogue spoken.

 

 The film has been an influence of filmmakers around the globe, both in the French New Wave that Melville helped usher in as well as gangster flicks that would appear up to thirty years later. From the cool, cold blooded killers in Reservoir Dogs or Pulp Fiction to the overcoat wearing assassin of The Killer, the influence of Melville’s masterpiece is evident. Quentin Tarantino has never been shy about expressing the influence of Melville’s work on his own and John Woo wrote that watching Le Samouraϊ was like watching a gangster movie made by a gentleman. The Killer was created as a love note to the great auteur and led the way for Woo to help usher in his fresh style of filmmaking.

Le Samouraϊ was less a gangster film like Scarface or White Heat, and more a character study. The casting of Alain Delon, a French actor known more for his pretty face than for his acting chops may have seemed like a strange choice at the time but paid off as he took the role of Jef Costello and delivered a career best performance. The fact that he would never match this performance again might be due to his refusal to accept various roles. He had already rejected Melville’s attempts to cast him prior to this film, expressing his desire to go to Hollywood. When he failed to gain stardom in Hollywood, he returned and agreed to meet with Melville for La Samouraϊ. After a read through of the script, when he saw he had no dialogue for the first eight minutes, he agreed on the spot to appear in the film.

 

Melville had a unique style directing actors. He believed that after giving minimal instructions (tip your hat and look into the mirror) he would let the actor move in whatever style they chose. He said that once he cast the actors, he knew exactly what they would do and let them move as they normally would. While it was a different performance by Delon than he usually performed, it was exactly what Melville knew he would achieve with the casting. Replacing the smile and charming personality that the handsome Delon had perfected, he remained stoic and emotionless the entire film. It is a stunning performance that makes his character seem so strong and dominating.

While the story takes the form of a film noir, the film is not shot in any way that is familiar to that specific genre. The most obvious difference is the use of color and the absence of shadows and dark settings. The film takes a more minimalist form. While there is music, the jazz score is still quite reserved and never dominates the proceedings. The settings are basic and empty in the life of Jef, yet in the case of the police station they take an almost futuristic feel. It is a contrasting form that places our antihero in a natural worldly atmosphere while the police are seen as overbearing and strange. While we know up front that Jef is a bad guy, enough is shown through the course of the film making us feel more comfortable with him than with any of the authority figures.

 

The other touch of the film that bears examining is the minimalist script. I know I have used that word a lot in this review, but it fits in all areas. The script shows us a simple story. A man is hired to kill another and then when witnesses speak up another man is sent to kill the original assassin. The original assassin then must find who has set him up as a target while trying to clear his name as the police are hot on his trail. What the film never does is tell us who the men were who hired him. Melville admitted he did not know who the organization was that hired Jef to begin with, only that they were just another MacGuffin such as those Alfred Hitchcock used. The police do not actually apprehend Jef and he goes out in a typical samurai style at the end. There is no explanation given to what happens next as with his death the story itself is now over. It is a snapshot in time – nothing more and nothing less.

What Melville does give us through the running time is a movie that exudes cool. Melville took the idea of a samurai and transposes it to the underworld setting of the hired killers and gangsters of modern day France. Melville took various genre staples from film noir, Japanese samurai films, police procedurals and the French New Wave and weaved himself an almost perfect film that transposed all those that came before. By creating his own distinct style with this picture he guaranteed himself a spot as one of the greatest talents to emerge from the New Wave that also produced Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut and Éric Rohmer.