Le Samourai

Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Samourai (1967) is a low-key masterwork. Melville influenced two generations of filmmakers with his stoic protagonist and meditative direction. Yet this striking neo-noir occupies a class of its own.

Hitman Jef Costello (Alain Delon) kills a nightclub owner and gets nabbed by the police. Though he establishes an alibi with a girlfriend (Nathalie Delon), Costello remains the Superintendent's (Francois Perrier) chief suspect. Jef dodges the cops and his double-crossing employer, being drawn to Valerie (Cathy Rosier), a nightclub musician who refused to identify him to the police. Yet Jef's employer offers him another job which hits closer to home.

Le Samourai oozes style. Melville provides meditative long takes and extended sequences, all conveyed with a minimum of dialogue. The opening shots of Jef in his lonely apartment set the tone, oppressive yet absorbing. The sparse plot allows Melville to focus on set pieces, from the prolonged police line-up to a frantic subway chase. The best scene has Jef ferreting out a wiretap, using his pet canary's chirping to distract eavesdroppers. Melville successful weds expressive direction with plays on genre tropes.

Melville cribs his plot from the noir This Gun for Hire (1942) but borrows the rituals and language of Westerns and samurai films. The title posits Jef as a modern-day ronin, a masterless killer cast adrift by his inscrutable code. Constantly alone, he uses people as tools without forging meaningful connections. Viewers might connect Jef to Clint Eastwood's Man With No Name but lacks his grudging morality. If Jef resembles any Leone character, it's Lee Van Cleef's Angel Eyes: "When I'm paid, I always see the job through!"

Alain Delon defines stoic. Jef rarely changes expressions or registers emotion, a Zen killer determined to control his emotions with his fate. Delon proves compelling through raw charisma, chiseled looks and cryptic gestures. Is this a great performance or a living embodiment of the Kuleshov effect? Either way Delon makes a unique antihero. 

Nathalie Delon (Alain's then-wife) plays Jef's beleaguered girlfriend. Cathy Rosier gets the most interesting character, a girl with motives as indecipherable as Jef's. Francois Perrier (Z) plays the dogged police inspector, with Jacques Leroy as a sleazy go-between.

Le Samourai is a classic. Its protagonist presaged four decades of antisocial antiheroes from The Conversation to Drive, but Melville's stellar craftsmanship remains the gold standard.