Bushido Lite

LE SAMOURAI (1967)

BUSHIDO LITE

This film has the indelible reputation of being a classic French film Noir; as being the inspiration for John Woo's THE KILLER, and Jim Jarmusch's GHOST DOG; and certainly influenced Jean Reno in THE PROFESSIONAL. It, in turn, was certainly influenced by Alan Ladd premiere role as "Raven" in THIS GUN FOR HIRE. Director Jean-Pierre Melville was a veteran of French crime films. This one was easily his best. He died six years later. It was released in 1972 as THE GODSON in America.

A very dark tale of a meticulous assassin living very secluded and alone in a rundown apartment house; inconspicuous, hiding in plain sight.; a Spartan existance, a monk's simplicity and dedication to vocational choice. There is only one spark of life in his gray domicile...a bird in a cage. This is a color film, but most of it is shot in deep shadow, and at night. In that sense, it does have a real Noir feel to it.

The film has been so well received, and held in such high esteem, somehow I expected more from it. The lexicon of assassin films is lengthy, so one longed to see something new, fresh, and original; something truly connected to samurai or yakuza roots. There was a pervading sense of doom, of fatalistic events, as we watched Alain Delon's character Jef Costello maneuvering himself into a tragic end. But for me, the primary weakness of the film was Delon himself. His matinee good looks, his rumpled Bogart raincoat, his strained attempts at "coolness"...seemed wrong, and off-center. I needed to witness toughness, not stiffness and effeminate posing. I needed to see Yves Montand or Gerard Depardieu as Costello. Someone with a lived-in face, deeply lined and chiseled, and life's weariness in his shoulders, and real violence springing from a killer's sinews...not the awkward shuffling of Delon's pretenses. I needed to see the propensity for pain and violence behind his eyes, anger predicated on a misspent life. Death in his eyes, countless killings strung to the horizon, the coldness of a professional mechanic, the blankness of zero guilt, the penetrating fear his mere stare could produce. I think I wanted to see Costello sitting in a dirty tee-shirt, cleaning his weapons lovingly, like Bruce Willis in THE LAST MAN STANDING. I longed to feel the samurai bushido connection to Costello...but with Delon it was just a vacuous state of disbelief . There was no whisper of Kurosawa, no Mifune stare, no Nakadai burst of pure violence...there was just Alain Delon posing, standing in shadows, and prancing in and out of stolen Citroens.

Nathalie Deon as Jane La Grange had some good moments. Married to Alain Delon, this was her film debut. Her scene with the wily first inspector, played by Roger Fradet, was very good. Her character's toughness, a beautiful woman caught up in the world of call girls and gangsters, mere inches from the descent into prostitution, came through; also what appeared to be geniune affection for the rake Costello. Fradet, as the chief inspector, was appropriately driven, prissy, and likewise meticulous; an excellent counterpoint and foil to the assassin. Cathy Rosier, as the jazz pianist, hit all the right notes; kind of a black French Keely Smith. Her decision not to finger Costello, whom she clearly recognized, seemed to imply her deeper involvement in the complexity of the murderous plot.

The film has been called," beautiful, sad, and very very cool."; le crime hot, I guess. The music itself was a bit pedestrian, needing some le jazz hot to punctuate the action. There were a lovely lot of triple crosses and plot twists. It was never clear if the jazz singer was the "name" on the second contract for Costello, before he killed the messenger. When Costello returned to her apartment, and he encountered the mid-level "boss", and eliminated him as reprisal...was this a random act, or his first faltering step in his pre-planned walk to doom ? Watching the bird in the cage at Costello's rathole of an apartment molting and dying, seemed an effective visual symbol for the killer's plight.

For me, the gendarmes seemed to be able to dog his tracks, bug his apartment and phone, and monitor his movements a little too easily. This was the tale of a careful professional killer, a man who thrived on danger, and had been very successful for a long time in staying undectected. Did Costello know he was walking into a trap for the climactic nightclub scene? Perhaps. There was the fact that he unloaded his pistol before going in. Was his life, his very existence so without meaning that he would sacrifice it without exacting the full measure of punishment on his betrayers ? Perhaps. So in the film's final flickers, we realize that we have viewed a classic, but it was too bad it had an empty ineffective heart in its chest.

Glenn Buttkus 2004