With apologies to Chester Himes for the title of this post--
Once if the nice things about a blog is that you can think on the "page," as it were. My last post, on Jean-Pierre Melville, led me to line up and arrange some ideas in my mind about him and his movies, which I have always liked, but without being able to state precisely why. None of my thoughts are particularly original, but they help clarify and deepen my viewing experience. So I decided to re-view Le Samourai, perhaps Melville's most influential movie, which stars Alain Deloin as Jef Costello, a contract killer.
Never have blue eyes been blanker, more glacial, more affectless. Costello is a samurai in that he lives alone, and by his own code. His hat and his coat become his uniform, and like the gunslinger Wilson in Shane, when he put his gloves on, he's ready to work. Melville's deliberate pacing of the plot makes the action, when it erupts, all the more startling. Both the police and the men who hired him pursue Costello, and there is almost, but not quite, a Langian equation of the two (as happens in M). Both groups are ruthless towards women, and it is Costello's code towards women that dooms him.
Le Samourai was released in 1967; Bullitt, with Steve McQueen, in 1968. A chase occurs in each as police pursue hitmen; the cops pursue Costello on the Metro in Paris, and Bullitt pursues the black Dodge Charger in his green Mustang. The latter is adrenaline-inducing; the former engages higher brain functions. Both chases--on a subway and in a car--occur in The French Connection, but it is the car chase that is remembered, which is unfortunate, because Melville's meticulousness, his precision, deserve to be as influential.
But then again, Hollywood always goes for the glands.
Never have blue eyes been blanker, more glacial, more affectless. Costello is a samurai in that he lives alone, and by his own code. His hat and his coat become his uniform, and like the gunslinger Wilson in Shane, when he put his gloves on, he's ready to work. Melville's deliberate pacing of the plot makes the action, when it erupts, all the more startling. Both the police and the men who hired him pursue Costello, and there is almost, but not quite, a Langian equation of the two (as happens in M). Both groups are ruthless towards women, and it is Costello's code towards women that dooms him.
Le Samourai was released in 1967; Bullitt, with Steve McQueen, in 1968. A chase occurs in each as police pursue hitmen; the cops pursue Costello on the Metro in Paris, and Bullitt pursues the black Dodge Charger in his green Mustang. The latter is adrenaline-inducing; the former engages higher brain functions. Both chases--on a subway and in a car--occur in The French Connection, but it is the car chase that is remembered, which is unfortunate, because Melville's meticulousness, his precision, deserve to be as influential.
But then again, Hollywood always goes for the glands.
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