AT CINEMA REBORN - A Filmic Postcard -Janice Tong responds to a fresh viewing of LE SAMOURAÏ (Jean-Pierre Melville, France, 1967)

Poetics of an empty branch: Melville’s Le Samouraï

 

The superb 3 minute opening sequence is a masterclass of film-making

An empty interior in semi-darkness, two large rectangular windows with its curtains drawn wide cast an eerie pre-dawn light into the room, its ghostliness reflected on the ceiling; in between the two windows in the drab light, is a birdcage, we can hear the bell-like chirp of a bird. Oh, but the room is actually not empty at all; we detect a brief movement from the lone figure who is lying on the bed on the right hand side of the screen. They proceed to light a cigarette and a cloud of smoke rises from where they lay. The small bird keeps up its lonely singular cry; the traffic outside continues to pass.

 

We have arrived: at a world where life and death is thinly disguised as a choice on the edge of a blade; and death, as well as life, can only be experienced in solitude.

 

the enigmatic stoicism of Delon's Jef Costello

This poetic neo-noir lures us into its milieu without the need of dialogue; like the end sequence of Wong Kar-wai’s Days of Being Wild (1990), we find ourselves deeply invested in the life of this lone figure within the first few minutes of the film’s opening. His silence continues as we watch him get up, put on a raincoat and fedora with a practised motion that is cat-like, balletic. He then goes out into the street and steals a car, drives it to a grimy garage in an isolated part of town; number plates changed, a gun and money exchange hands – all without its characters uttering a word. 

 

There is an ontological fatalism at the core of this film that saturates Alain Delon’s character, Jef Costello – indifference oozes out of him. He is a magnificent animal who hunts as absolutely as he loves – magnetic and rare. So rare that, in fact, he may be a lone specimen in this jungle of crime. Paired with Melville’s eye, the lithe rhythm of the film and its monochromatic palette, seems to indicate that Costello’s world was already exsanguinated at birth. Although we will soon find out that not all his exchanges are bloodless affairs. 

 

Jean-Pierre Melville, dubbed as the spiritual godfather of the French New Wave – you can see him in Godard’s Breathless (1960), where he has a cameo as a renowned author. In Godard’s film, he was asked the question “What is your ambition in life?” Where he answers: “I want to be immortal and then die.” It seems Melville has lived up to his fictitious dream – his films have immortalised him – and over the years, he has a developed a huge following especially from latter day directors, the likes of Tarantino, Scorsese, Bertolucci, Frankenheimer, as well as Johnnie To, and Takeshi Kitano; well-loved by film students and cinephiles alike. His films have the ability to indoctrinate any filmgoer with a sense of the charismatic, through his stylised cinematic universe. And this film, Le samouraï, made when the director was 50 years old and only 5 years before his untimely death in 1973, is one of his best. 

Melville as Parvulesco in Godard's Breathless

One man lineup

 

Born Jean-Pierre Grumbach, he had a penchant for all things American and kept his pseudonym of Melville, (after his beloved American writer Herman Melville) coined during the resistance. His noir and neo-noir films are stylistically sparse; in fact, Melville’s “dream is to make a colour film in black and white, in which there is only one tiny detail to remind us that we really are watching a film in colour.” So much so that he photocopied bank notes in black and white for Delon to use in the film; and his longtime collaborator, cinematographer Henri Decaë refused to even give a hint of colour detail in the opening scene.

 

In the book Melville on Melville by Rui Nogueira, the director described the fateful moment when he was at Delon’s apartment reading the script out loud to the actor. This was their exchange: “You’ve been reading the script for seven and a half minutes now and there hasn’t been a word of dialogue. That’s good enough for me. I’ll do the film. What’s the title?” “Le samouraï,” I told him. Without a word, he signed to me to follow him. He led me to his bedroom: all it contained was a leather couch and a samurai’s lance, sword, and dagger.” It seems that the Gods had deemed this role to be made for Delon. And so began their partnership that led to two other films, Le cercle rouge (1970) and Un flic (1972); the former, just like Le samouraï, has little to no dialogue; preferring the kind of laconic existentialism of Hitchcockian’s pure cinema – to stage a scene visually without dialogue.

 

Despite the stars aligning that evening, the pair had a stuttering start to their relationship, After the success of Le doulos (1962), Melville had wanted to adapt another Pierre Lesou novel with Delon as the lead. But Delon turned down this offer in order to pursue other international and US roles instead. It wasn’t until years later until Delon reconnected with Melville and asked for a chance to work together. At that time, the rights to Lesou’s novel, Main pleine was no longer available (it had already been adapted into a film two years previous), so instead, Melville decided to pitch something different to him: said to be a script he had written for Delon that combines a remake of the American noir film This Gun for Hire (1942) and Joan MacLeod’s novel The Ronin. Of course, the latter book never actually existed. You see, Melville has a fondness for inventing fictive novels and quotes. Famously, the epigraph at the start of Le samouraï: “There is no solitude greater than a samurai's. Unless perhaps it is that of a tiger in the jungle. – The Book of Bushido". Sure enough Bushido, or the way of the warrior exists as a text, but the quote is entirely fictional, made up by Melville. Similarly, the quote attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, at the start of Le cercle rouge was another of his inventions.

 

Nathalie Delon as Jane Lagrange

Fiction aside, moments of the ‘real’ surfaced during the making of this film. Melville cast Delon’s wife, Nathalie, for his lover and standing alibi, Jane Lagrange, because he thought they looked like brother and sister (and this is especially true. My husband actually commented on how symmetrical her features were and upon seeing her surname ‘Delon’ in the credits, immediately drew the conclusion that they were siblings). In the scene where they bid each other goodbye, Costello kisses her hair with his eyes closed; a wordless gesture that ended his relationship with his lover – that same evening, Melville came to learn that Alain and Nathalie have actually agreed to separate; so the intensity captured on camera was in fact, their intimate parting of ways. Another haunting farewell was by André Garet, a previous collaborator with Melville in Bob le flambeur (1956), he was the garage mechanic. Garet was incredibly ill at the time, and only took the role to please Melville. He ended his last scene with the words “I warn you Jef, it’s the last time.” It really was his last time – as Garet only had time to dub this voice over before he went into the hospital to die. And Delon’s reply “All right”, dubbed after he learnt of Garet’s passing, was also spoken like a farewell to Garet.

 

Even with the great reception of the film, with 1.9 million tickets sold in France; Le samouraï has had a troubled existence. During the shoot, Melville’s Studio Jenner, a studio he had built himself in the 13th arrondissement, burnt down to the ground on the 29th June 1967. This incident destroyed all of Melville’s archives and also killed the little bird – a female bullfinch – the sole companion of the assassin, that was also the symbol of his solitude and confinement. Melville’s untimely death and the confusion over who owns the rights to his films, meant that Le samouraï, completed in 1967, was only able to get a release, in a badly edited and dubbed-to-English version in the United States in 1972; ridiculously renamed The Godson, in order to ride on the success of Coppola’s The Godfather (1972)

 

Cathy Rosier

The ending (spoiler alert), for me, carries a certain existential stoicism of the samurai. (And yes, two endings were shot – a ‘smiling’ Jef, and the one that was kept in the film). For a samurai, suicide means a chance to be redeemed, preferring the choice of an honourable death rather than bring shame to his clan or family if captured by the enemy. Here, Costello chooses to give up one’s own life for another’s. His seppuku takes the form of a bullet to the heart; and this sacrifice was made for the nightclub singer, Valérie (Latin root for valiant) (Cathy Rosier) who did not give him up at the lineup; which in turn, makes her a target if Costello continues to escape capture by men who hired him, or by the police. For him to choose death over life perhaps also means that finally, he is able to escape solitude and the confines of his existence. 

 

Le samouraï  is currently screening as part of the Cinema Reborn 2024 program. There is one more screening in Melbourne of  the film before it leaves these shores for possibly quite a long time.  The newly restored 4K version is at the Lido Cinemas In Melbourne on 14th May 2024 at 6.00 pm. Go and get a ticket – you will be in for a treat! Click on the link to book.