Le Samourai, Jean-Pierre Melville 1967
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Alain Delon, the brilliant embodiment of the contract killer Jef Costello |
Jef Costello (Alain Delon) is a lone wolf, an assassin living in Paris, surviving in his own quiet, minimalist world. Costello is a perfectionist, ultra-calm and poised, and he always gets the hit done. On this occasion however, someone witnesses him leaving the murder scene, and gradually his expertly-prepared alibi appears to be coming undone at the seams.
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Caty Rosier is witness to the crime |
Melville's film is an ultra-stylistic, nuanced offering with perfect temporal sensibilities. The muted, almost hollow, tones of Costello's world are perfectly reflected in the very considered set design.
Le Samourai is part-suspense, part-crime drama, part-noir, part-gangster, and part-psychological drama with a police procedural thrown in for good measure, yet it is so carefully crafted that it doesn't at all feel disjointed; Melville makes it his own.
Delon is so completely transformed from
previous roles and his film star persona in his media interviews, his eyes harbouring the unsettling disquiet and loneliness that bubble beneath his poised surface. Melville has said that he created Costello as a contract killer suffering from schizophrenia.
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Melville uses Hollywood elements such as the police line-up and the noir trenchcoat-and-hat combo |
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Delon and the exceptional Francois Perier |
The main character is captured numerously from a front-on angle, and it's these shots of Delon's face and eyes that continually draw the viewer in, revealing the stormy yet empty vessels on his skeletal face. Costello is a solitary figure with very few connections in the world, his only true ally and friend being his caged bird which he has an almost supernatural connection with.
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Note how the figure perfectly emulates that in the painting on the left |
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Rosier's world of the rich, modernist piano bar is vastly different to Costello's stark and muted apartment |
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Rosier switches between being dressed in white, and sparkling; to being framed suspiciously in black |
Le Samourai is a highly-stylised, expertly and tightly crafted film that is definitely worth a watch. A highly absorbing, nuanced film that is definitively a classic and a stalwart of the auteur film.
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The Criterion collection's included essay |