death charm
by
Douglas Messerli
Jean-Pierre
Melville and Georges Pellegrin (writers), Jean-Pierre Melville (Director) Le Samouraï (The Samurai) / 1967
Jean-Pierre
Melville’s Le Samouraï, like many of
his films, does not truly depend upon plot, but upon how expertly the simple plot—in this
case a couple of murders by Paris hitman Jef Costello (Alain Delon)—is carried
out. Sauve skill is demanded, which, of course, actor Delon emanates in nearly
all of his films, and a strange loyalty to codes that do not always rationally
make sense. And in this case Delon’s character is the consummate samurai, as
lonely as a jungle title, living out of a nearly empty room with only a forever
chirping bird by his bed.
We never discover why Jef has been hired to kill a nightclub owner; it doesn’t matter. And even though we may hate his actions, we come to perceive him as a kind of hero in a world of both policemen and gang leaders who would arrest or kill him.
Tossing the gloves and gun into the
Seine, Jef checks the time and ducks into his former girlfriend Jane’s
(Nathalie Delon) apartment house. At precisely 2:00 a.m., as Jane’s current
lover, arrives, Jef walks out through the front door to be witnessed leaving
the place. With Jane’s agreement to testify that he was there for several
hours, he has what might be seen as an airtight cover.
The police do, indeed, arrest him. But in
the line-up all but one of the witnesses deny that he’s the man they saw at the
club, even the pianist. The police have no choice but to let him go, yet put
him under tight surveillance. Our “hero” however knows the subway system inside
out, and eventually escapes them to meet with the man who will pay him for his
deed.
Instead of handing over the cash,
however, the man attempts to kill him, fortunately only hitting Jef’s arm.
After a few hours of nursing the wound, he determines to meet with the pianist
to discover why she has protected him. She never quite explains herself, but
plans for a later meeting with him.
In the meanwhile, the police have bugged
his apartment, but his pet bird has been so annoyed by the intrusion that it
will not stop chirping, while dropping several of its feathers. Jef finds the
bug and destroys it.
Returning to his apartment his former
shooter sits waiting for his arrival, gun in hand. This time, however, he not
only pays Jefs but puts him under contract for another job.
Jef eventually overpowers him, demanding that he name his boss. And, as
we might suspect, that man becomes his next target (a trope picked up and
repeated in a later hit-man movie, Richard Shepard’s The Matador of 2005).
Amazingly, the very next scene shows Jef,
reentering the nightclub, dressed similarly to his last visit there. This time
he checks his hat, but refuses the tab.
Walking
slowly to the pianist, he takes out his gun and prepares to shoot her, but
before he can, he himself is shot by a trailing detective. You’re lucky we got
here in time, mutters the detective, as another, picking up the gun, discovers
that all of its chambers are empty. Valérie, obviously, was to have been his
next contract target, which he had no intention of carrying out.
If this rather clumsy retelling of the
story seems a bit uninteresting, I can assure that Melville’s movie is anything
but. It’s a work of style and beauty, both in its sets and actors. Melville
reportedly had originally wanted to end Jef’s life with one last long look at
Delon’s beautiful face, his sly smile still pasted to it. But he angrily
changed it after learning that Delon had already played another movie death
scene the same way. It is almost as if, in this case, even the director could
not get enough of Delon’s radiantly visual charm.
Los Angeles,
September 5, 2017
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