Le Samourai (1967)

       With 1967’s Le Samourai, director Jean-Pierre Melville generated the perfect mix of style, coolness, intelligence and suspense, and crafted one of the best crime dramas to ever be released. In terms of style and cool, none has ever been able to equal hitman Jef Costello, or even more so, the overall atmosphere created throughout the entire film. It screams of being hipper than anything you’ll ever see. Far from being based entirely on style, the script and direction takes the ultra-cool Costello character and allows Alain Delon to carry out a study into what makes a man like this tick.

         Melville probes into the killer’s psyche, laying out and ultimately testing the code that he has lived by for his entire professional life. And all of this is done in such a manner as to feel like one big game of chess, pitting the police force of Paris against the lone wolf assassin. It is suspenseful until the end and when it finally reaches its dramatic conclusion, it allows each viewer to recalibrate the events of the story to fit their own interpretation of the finish.       

         Jean-Pierre Melville creates a precise, taut, and elegant film in Le Samourai Jef's inscrutable, Bressonian demeanor is reflected through the use of austere colors (blues and grays), inclement weather, and pervasive silence to create an unnatural and unnerving atmosphere.

      Furthermore, the repeated image of the caged bird, the police interrogation and surveillance, and the pursuit in the Paris Metro (intercut with disorienting images of the position indicators lighting the intricate subway map), contribute to a sense of entrapment, as Jef attempts to evade everyone while pursuing Valerie, believing that she holds the key to the identities of the anonymous syndicate. Inevitably, Jef finds himself returning to the scene of the crime, to confront the enigmatic Valerie, and in the process, face his own destiny

Movie description 

                                 

               Le Samourai opens to a shot of rain beating onto the window of a darkened room. At the corner of the frame, a puff of smoke emanates from a lit cigarette. An occasional shrill chirp is heard from a caged bird. The rest is silence. An impassive man, Jef Costello (Alain Delon), rises from the bed, dons his trenchcoat and fedora, and leaves the room.

          Following the credits, text appears in the top right corner of the shot. The text reads, “There is no greater solitude that that of a samurai, unless it is that of the tiger in the jungle….perhaps…” The quote is attributed to Bushido (Book of Samurai), which Melville fabricated for the film, and illustrates the connection between Jef’s disciplined isolation and the social exile experience by the great worries like, Samurai.

           Immediately after the text appears in the frame, the shot begins undulating violently from rapid zoom-ins and zoom-outs. The mutation of the shot results in the shot actually being wider, the camera further away from Jef. His isolation and distance is intensified, correlating with the revelation of Jef as a type of ronin.

           Following the widening of the opening shot, Jef sits up in his bed and turns his back to the camera, facing the windowed wall, smoky light dancing over his head. He has turned away from the camera, away from the audience; go in further into his own separation and loneliness.

        The slow, lingering pace of the opening shot of “Le Samourai” sets the momentum of Melville’s film and the gray-blue dreariness of the color scheme is consistent throughout, almost as if Melville is attempting to make a color film in black and white.

                             

The minimal description of a man in a hat and raincoat is enough to get Jef caught in a dragnet along with dozens of the usual suspects.  A few at a time they are lined up on stage for the Martey's staff to examine. One man is positive that Jef is the killer, but the pianist, who has looked at him point blank, will not confirm his identity.

                             

The film’s structure is symmetrical, with the opening and closing acts mirroring one another. Each act involves Jef stealing a car and killing a man. The only difference is his motivation, which goes from monetary to self preservation, because the men who hired him to kill the first man are worried that Jef has become a liability after being questioned by the police.

Costume

Jef Costello every move makes has a purpose. His image is attenuated to this persona. Meticulous dress: a suit, a raincoat, and a hat that is always perfectly adjusted.

Styles

         Beginning the film with a superb bogus quote (“There’s no greater solitude that the Samurai’s, unless perhaps it be that of the tiger in the jungle,” written by the film maker but attributed to the Japanese “Book of Bushido”), Mr Melville achieved this simplicity through a sophisticated overview of the genre. His style remains haunting and elegantly spare, just right for the kind of hit man who lives in silence, in bare and colourless surroundings, with a lonely caged bird.