LE SAMOURAI Movie Review

The Samurai

The steely eyed 32-year-old Alain Delon is Jef Costello, an ice-cold, contract killer who lives—and is prepared to die—by a personal code of honor, in a world where betrayal is the norm on both sides of the law. Jef's latest job, which requires him to murder a nightclub owner, has plunged him into a whirlpool of intrigue, treachery, and revenge that the trenchcoated hit man will either extricate himself from via his own rules, or die trying. French director Jean-Pierre Melville's justly legendary Le Samourai is a thrillingly stylized, mythic epic of revenge set in the dark and seedy back alleys of a Paris that seems to have been dreamed rather than filmed. What little talk there is is tougher than a two-dollar steak, yet buried deep in the unforgiving universe of Le Samourai is a breathtakingly romantic heart, grieving for the loss of an era when there was honor among thieves. The bitter realization that such a time never existed is what ultimately destroys Jef, and it makes Le Samourai the noir of noirs. Though it was made in 1967, Le Samourai wasn't seen in the U.S. until the early 1970s—and then only in a cut, dubbed version that was ludicrously but opportunistically titled The Godson. The original finally reached American screens in 1997, and it was greeted by a well-deserved, too-long-delayed outpouring of critical raves. Add mine. With François Perier as the police inspector determined to nail Jef, Nathalie Delon as Jef's longtime lover, and Caty Rosier as the nightclub singer who could finger Jef as the killer, but doesn't. The hallucinatory, barely colored images are by the brilliant cinematographer Henri Decaë.

NEXT STOP … Le Doulos, Bob le Flambeur, The Killer

1967 95m/C FR Alain Delon, Francois Perier, Cathy Rosier, Nathalie Delon, Jacques Leroy, Jean-Pierre Posier; D: Jean-Pierre Melville; W: Jean-Pierre Melville; C: Henri Decae; M: Francois de Roubaix. VHS NYF