A cold and elegant classic French crime movie in which Alain Delon plays a Parisian hitman who lives by the Samurai code.
A huge and dark half-empty room, the black-and-white skyline of the city outside the window, light moves across the ceiling as cars pass by. We hear rainfall. A canary chirps in a cage. Cigarette smoke is rising from the dark figure of a man lying in bed. «There is no greater solitude than that of the samurai unless it is that of the tiger in the jungle perhaps, ” reads the epigraph to the film, followed by the caption: «Bushido, the Code of the Samurai.» So begins the best-known work by Jean-Pierre Melville.
Melville invented the quote that he attributed to Bushido, just like he invented the entire world of Le Samouraï. The fact that the action takes place in 1960s France is only evident in street scenes with city posters and billboards. Otherwise, Melville’s film is a reinterpretation of American noir with inclement weather, deep shadows, taciturn gangster men, and stunningly beautiful women.
Melville and cinematographer Henri Decaë worked meticulously to recreate in color the aesthetic of monochrome black-and-white films of the 1940s. The palette of gray, grayish blue, beige, black, and white shades, the long shots and a focus on action (the first line is pronounced ten minutes into the movie) draw our attention to recurring details: the crisp felt hat, the raincoat buttoned up to the top, the white gloves, which Jef Costello, played by Delon, puts on before shooting. Melville created a myth about an assassin who is a lonely man obsessed by his job.
The film will be screened in French with Russian subtitles.
Le Samouraï
Director: Jean-Pierre Melville
France, 1967. 105 min. 16+