Le Samouraï

Jean-Pierre Melville's 1967 film Le Samouraï is the story of a hired assassin who slips up on a hit and his race against time to set things right. Jef Costello (Alain Delon) is given a contract to kill a nightclub owner, but on the way out he is seen by the club's pianist (Cathy Rosier) and then gets himself picked up in a police sweep. He finds himself pursued by both a cunning detective (François Périer) and by his disappointed employers. As the film progresses, Costello manages to elude both threats while remaining true to his bushido-like code of honour. The strongest aspect of Le Samouraï, I feel, is Alain Delon's performance. Beginning with an utterly stoic mien and confidence, Costello gradually loses his cool over the course of the film, and Delon skillfully depicts this subtle collapse. Melville's direction is remarkable for its ability to sustain suspense (even across multiple viewings, when one already knows how it will go down), and it's curious how the audience is led to sympathy for this man who is basically a cold-blooded murderer. We are even denied a back story that might serve as an apology for his profession. Instead, Costello is just a robotic killing machine, but the film makes us feel concern for him nonetheless. There is also memorable soundtrack by François de Roubaix, an early example of electronic music. Some aspects of the policework are presented in a clunky or unbelievable fashion (the detective has memorized every building in Paris, seriously?), so I cannot rate this as a flawless masterpiece. But still, it's a good film, and part of the basic education of a cinephile: Le Samouraï has proved vastly influential in the decades since its release, and those who have seen more recent films like Jim Jarmusch's Ghost Dog or Michael Mann's Collateral will recognize various aspects of those to be hommages to Melville's classic. Le Samouraï, in turn, looks back like many French films of this time to American film noir, as well as to the then-recent French New Wave.