306 Le samouraï

[Narshty]

Not his crime stuff, that's for sure. He's a master stylist, but his films lack any kind of tangible pulse. It's exactly the same problem with Sergio Leone. I get dreadfully bored when the plot leads the characters. It was a struggle to make it through to the end of Le Samourai, to be honest, and when it was over I just felt wastefully numb.

I hold out hopes for Les Enfants Terribles though.

[daniel p]

Not his crime stuff, that's for sure. He's a master stylist, but his films lack any kind of tangible pulse. It's exactly the same problem with Sergio Leone. I get dreadfully bored when the plot leads the characters. It was a struggle to make it through to the end of Le Samourai, to be honest, and when it was over I just felt wastefully numb.

I hold out hopes for Les Enfants Terribles though.

While I understand what you are saying regarding your problems with the films Narshty, at the same time, I cannot sympathise with you. I'd put Leone and Melville in my top 10 directors, and regard their work as some of the best I've seen. Both respectively peerless in their genres in my opinion.

With all due respect, and I don't want to sound patronising in any way, but I almost feel sorry that you don't get what I get out of them

[PfR73]

If you look at the new DVDBeaver comparison, it appears that 1.85:1 is the OAR. All the shots from the Rene Chateau, while revealing a little more at top and bottom, lose much on the sides and appear zoomed in.

[Kinsayder]

Agree with Matt about the terrific Black Panther/Richard Strauss logo. I wish I knew more about the Rene Chateau company. Their catalogue is still mostly VHS only, and a lot of it appalling lowbrow/middlebrow Louis de Funes comedies and the like, the very worst of the late Gabins, and then something sublime like Gueule d'Amour! You still see occasionally in Paris, middle aged guys of a certain bent, in neat but shabby clothes on the Metro, carrying around their bits and pieces in a boldly emblazoned Rene Chateau plastic bag. Does the label have some sort of (Melvillian?) social history??

An incomplete but representative list of their DVD titles. Personally, I think there are plenty of gems to be found among their catalogue, including a couple of Chabrols (Les Fantômes du chapelier and Alice ou la dernière fugue), some Renoirs, Carné's Les Portes de la nuit, Clouzot's L'Assassin habite... au 21 and Melville's Le Deuxième souffle.

[Godot]

It was a struggle to make it through to the end of Le Samourai, to be honest, and when it was over I just felt wastefully numb.

Jon, I'm surprised you did not at least enjoy the elements that later would crop up in such homages as our beloved The Driver. Granted, Hill's style is more visceral, but Melville's laid the seed: the wooden/calm antihero, resting in bed thinking, the acsetic lifestyle, hounded by cops and criminals, the cop/hero doubling, the mysterious female witness that provides a false alibi at the line-up, the unexpectedly quick eruptions of violence, the playing up the hero's being "unarmed" at key moments, the inevitable herding into a police trap (and the girl) at the end. Melville is more nihilistic, Hill more mythic and existential (even their titles express this), but the references delighted me on first seeing Le Samourai after years of The Driver.

Another homage I recommend highly is Jarmusch's Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai.

[Narshty]

While I understand what you are saying regarding your problems with the films Narshty, at the same time, I cannot sympathise with you. I'd put Leone and Melville in my top 10 directors, and regard their work as some of the best I've seen. Both respectively peerless in their genres in my opinion.

I'd agree that both directors (in certain respects) do define their genres, at least stylistically, but both are devoted to their genres' conventions and are quite happy within their confines, which isn't something I find an especially mouth-watering prospect. Genre conventions, by and large, necessitate that certain things happen to the characters, whereas I much prefer it when the characters are allowed to simply happen to each other. Le Samourai (and other genre milestones I've seen, such as Out of the Past or Once Upon A Time in the West) disappointed me because they laid out everything I expected and nothing I didn't.

With all due respect, and I don't want to sound patronising in any way, but I almost feel sorry that you don't get what I get out of them

Nothing wrong with that whatsoever.

Jon, I'm surprised you did not at least enjoy the elements that later would crop up in such homages as our beloved The Driver. Granted, Hill's style is more visceral, but Melville's laid the seed ... Melville is more nihilistic, Hill more mythic and existential (even their titles express this), but the references delighted me on first seeing Le Samourai after years of The Driver.

I think it was the seriousness with which Le Samourai took itself that bugged me. Rarely have I seen so slight a film so unwaveringly convinced of its own profundity. Walter Hill, on the other hand, is always ready to acknowledge the cheerful shallowness of his pictures with a rough-and-ready intensity that can go a long way in winning one over. Pulp cinema can, of course, be fabulous but only when approached with the right sense of glee and showmanship.

[HerrSchreck]

It was a struggle to make it through to the end of Le Samourai, to be honest, and when it was over I just felt wastefully numb.

Jon, I'm surprised you did not at least enjoy the elements that later would crop up in such homages as our beloved The Driver. Granted, Hill's style is more visceral, but Melville's laid the seed: the wooden/calm antihero, resting in bed thinking, the acsetic lifestyle, hounded by cops and criminals, the cop/hero doubling, the mysterious female witness that provides a false alibi at the line-up, the unexpectedly quick eruptions of violence, the playing up the hero's being "unarmed" at key moments, the inevitable herding into a police trap (and the girl) at the end.
Another homage I recommend highly is Jarmusch's Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai.

Although the uniqueness of Le Samourai speaks for itself, my opinion is that this is the cinema of a man very very deeply versed in pre-existing film grammar. There is no new film language being invented here-- at least not in my opinion. I see very little "seed" being laid. What for me makes the film special is the unique combination of PREEXISTING elements that exists on it's visual surface... the way Delon looked at this moment in his life (an existential sadness written in his expression, perhaps the residue of his disintegrating marriage), the quasi-expressionistic set designs in their reflecting the interior state of the hitman and the mood of the film itself... colors of loneliness... the editing ryhthm, the sparse dialog, the subject matter, the gentle atmosphere and camera work (I'm only moderately surpsised that Woo finds such inspiration in such a quiet film, a film devoid of slo-mo in which almost nothing excessively physical happens onscreen). All of these things combine to create Le Samourai, a unique little film... yet still not anything stunningly new in the annals of film grammar.

Stripping exposition completely away to it's absolute bare essentials, forcing the viewer to inhabit a mass of blank areas and fill in certain details for themselves-- ie plop you right into an ongoing story without setup-- was nothing new at that time. Bresson had been driving mass-market filmgoers crazy with this technique for a decade by the time Samourai was made, Tarkovsky's elusive obscurity is well known... in fact, going back to Carl Mayer's films in narrative 'realtime', devoid of intertitles, where characters are "followed around for awhile", made with Lupu Pick and FW Murnau, this quiet, minimalist pacing had been pre-existent for a long time.

And the above mentioned "wooden calm anti-hero" in Samourai is, to me, tantalizingly similar to the master criminal in the great John Alton-lensed, Alfred Werker (Anthony Mann anonymously directed as backup) B-film/noir masterpiece HE WALKED BY NIGHT. His poignant relationship with an adorable housepet (who keys him in to the presence of the police/opponents), the sparse single room, the ascetic monkish solitary existence, the blonde hair blue-eyed handsome features, his occupation of the uppermost pinnacle of lone-wolf criminal royalty, the self-medical attending to gunshot wounds at home, the resting in bed thinking, the cop/hero doubling, the admiration/resentment of the law for his skills, the complete lack of details about the master criminal's personal history as well as his hopes and dreams, the inevitable police trap at the end, the drawing in of criminals citywide in the beginning in the 'dragnet' to try and nab him early on in a fast bulk reel-in of all suspicious characters... these devices were employed most expertly in HE WALKED BY NIGHT.

The difference I believe is in Le Samourai, the gentle mood, hypnotic pacing, spacious claustrophobia (so to speak) urge us to IDOLIZE Delon, to see him as the very incarnation of cool... whereas Richard Basehart, though clearly sketched in as a character to be respected, is to be feared, not LIKED. Thus Melville tells us through his setups-- "I love this hitman's look, his ways, his devastating cool calmness... Wouldn't it be nice to be regarded with the same awe and respect with which you see my character...? he's what I wish I was in my fantasy realm, and I've emptied him of details so you can do the same; he is my poem to Intercontinental Cool." Some songwriters know when they've written a song so infectuous that they'll be instant hits to be whistled by everyone upon release. This filmmaker knew he'd be sending white males into trench coats & Stetson shops, rehearsing their perfect inscrutable stonefaces in the mirror-- knew there'd be a million Delon wannabe's immediately thereafter.

Despite my hard examination I love this film very much. It seems empty upon first view, but it fills up in a curious way-- when you're not watching it. It's the perfect DVD movie in that it's so much like a song-- very poetic-- that you can't wait to get home and put it back on your player. Your mind processes it during downtime, images linger and gather significance, sending you back to the film to investigate these ever-morphing nuances of significance which your mind attaches to it. Suddenly those most vacant-seeming areas of seeming quiet drift (rainy windshields anyone?) become fraught with the deepest, most hard-felt sense of feeling in all the world.

Graf Orlok

[Fletch F. Fletch]

Jon, I'm surprised you did not at least enjoy the elements that later would crop up in such homages as our beloved The Driver. Granted, Hill's style is more visceral, but Melville's laid the seed: the wooden/calm antihero, resting in bed thinking, the acsetic lifestyle, hounded by cops and criminals, the cop/hero doubling, the mysterious female witness that provides a false alibi at the line-up, the unexpectedly quick eruptions of violence, the playing up the hero's being "unarmed" at key moments, the inevitable herding into a police trap (and the girl) at the end. Melville is more nihilistic, Hill more mythic and existential (even their titles express this), but the references delighted me on first seeing Le Samourai after years of The Driver.

Another homage I recommend highly is Jarmusch's Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai.

Agreed. And, of course, the most obvious homage to Melville's film, John Woo's The Killer. Also, I wonder if Michael Mann is a big fan of this movie? The whole opening scene where we see Jef getting ready for a job without any dialogue reminds me of the opening of Mann's Thief (or any of his films that all begin without dialogue, showing the protagonist at work) where we see Caan's character at work without any dialogue.

[Godot]

Graf,
that's an interesting post, it's given me a lot to think about.

There is no new film language being invented here-- at least not in my opinion. I see very little "seed" being laid.

I think you misunderstood my post, or perhaps you give me too much credit (I like to think it's the latter). I was not implying that Melville was inventing new screen grammar. I was referring only to elements of style that popped up in later films that I knew Jon enjoyed. Obviously Melville lifts many style elements from his own cinematic and literary sources, and I find it entertaining to see how recent directors do the same, poaching from Melville (especially since my exposure to Melville is only in the last two years, so the elements are more strongly linked to the modern homages).

Thanks for the excellent insights on He Walked by Night; those references had never occurred to me. I don't consider it much of a "noir masterpiece", though, more of a 2nd-tier Mann-Alton work (with Mystery Street and Border Incident) behind T-Men and Raw Deal. I think it relies too much on the semi-documentary police procedural style, and doesn't disorient/unsettle the spectator enough (though the flight in the sewers is great) for top noir honors.

My favorite scene in Le Samourai is the post-arrest meeting with the mob messenger on the train platform, when Melville jump-cuts to a running hand-held long-shot across the tracks and behind a fence when

SpoilerShow

they exchange gunshots at close range.

I find that particular cut fascinating, and very good at disorienting us (forcing identification with Jeff's shock).

[HerrSchreck]

Graf,
that's an interesting post, it's given me a lot to think about... re He Walked by Night[/b]; those references had never occurred to me. I don't consider it much of a "noir masterpiece", though, more of a 2nd-tier Mann-Alton work (with Mystery Street and Border Incident) behind T-Men and Raw Deal. I think it relies too much on the semi-documentary police procedural style, and doesn't disorient/unsettle the spectator enough (though the flight in the sewers is great) for top noir honors. .[/quote

Thanks back to you for the openness to idea-exchange.

I agree with you re the placement of He Walked... behind TMEN & RAW DEAL-- reason more than likely being that Mann helmed the latter two entirely, whereas his participation in HE WALKED.. was more that of Quick-FixerUpper. Seems that Alfred Werker's direction was turning out rather subpar (something that'll inevitably begin glaring as a waste of a great crew's time when being lensed by Alton, i e awful mise en scene put beneath such fabulously expressive pictorial design) and Mann was called in after the fact to pinch hit the thing into the realm of Acceptable. Note that Mann's name does not appear on the credits. As to the 'police procedural' style, these (including TMEN, CALL NORTHSIDE 777, etc) were all capitalizing on the ".. taken directly from crime files" success 2 yrs earlier of HOUSE ON 92ND STREET (in which the FBI actually particpated & lent bureau locations). But the compelling nature of HE WALKED is evident in the fact that DRAGNET spun off of this film. I still find it, despite it's obvious "B" status, within the bleak budgetary parameters of the medium, a sinfully watchable masterpiece, boiling over with an excess of professionalism, masculinity and virtuosity. But that's just me. I love these tight, bleak little throwaways the B's cranked out between 1945-49.

One of several problems I've always had in LE SAMOURAI lay in the scene you mentioned, the railway overpass shooting (I also agree with you regarding admiration for the cutting & shift to hand-held). How could a "samurai" be caught so entirely by surprise in such a dog eat dog business? How could a samurai be so trusting of men he'd never met(boss)/known(intermediary)? Why would a samurai with a bushido-soaked heart go in and out the club front door for his hit-- then walk around later on without changing his clothes? If he's going to go in & out the front, why walk with head down and rushing stiffly forward before & after the hit in front of a roomfull of spectators rather than acting a little more natural? That's the only way I can see a samurai doing a public enter & exit-- that is, instead of the obviously preferable silently entering a rear entrance or window to avoid beholders. Particularly since the seeming prerequisite for arrest (lineup room) seems to, aside from the arrest of 'usual suspects' (which he is not, having no arrest record) be Those Men Found Wearing A Trenchcoat & Stetson Hat? Those who contracted his services want him dead because he became a suspect-- because he was arrested. If he didn't commit seppuku in the end he may very well have been indicted due to the carelessness in wearing the murder clothes. Melville wanted a Cool, Stylish killer, so much so that he sacrificed the elements of samurai supremacy. A samurai cannot be caught by surprise like he was on the bridge-- in the samurai "auditions" in Seven Samurai, Delon might have been clunked on the head with the stick if he was walking in to pick up his cash from his phantom, unknown payee.

[Gordon]

But don't you think the whole phony "bushido" quote at the beginning, the lapses in logic with Delon remaining in the Trenchcoat and even the apparent turnaround of the chanteuse are all aspects of Melvillian lightness?

Well, I for one believe that they are aspects of Melville's often misunderstood attitude, his sense of humour that are to be found in almost all his films and are not unique to Le samourai. Jef Costello should not be thought of as a traditional samurai caught up in the modern world. The title of the film and the fabricated quote are not at all important to me. The sensibility of the film, stylistically, has a very strong Japanese connection, though. The inspiration of Japanese films on Melville is often overlooked. From Deux hommes dans Manhattan onwards, he plays with genre conventions, while all the time, respecting them.

It all gets very different in le Cercle Rouge, where Melville seems to quote the mise-en-place directly from Becker's much earlier Touchez pas au Grisbi, down to the nightclub, chorus girls and male bonding etc

definitely. But don't forget the influence of Huston's, The Asphalt Jungle and Dassin's, Rififi. All these films, to me, are the high points of the 'heist' genre, as they offer so much to the viewer. Technically, cinematically and emotioanlly, they are awesome feats of filmmaking.

[HerrSchreck]

Yes, yes these posts are extremely perceptive. But don't you think the whole phony "bushido" quote at the beginning, the lapses in logic with Delon remaining in the Trenchcoat and even the apparent turnaround of the chanteuse are all aspects of Melvillian lightness?

.

I think you've hit on something there DH. The bushido quote in the beginning... it seems to me from watching the film that the only aspect of actual Bushido that Melville is interested in exploring, really, is that of solitude... a stoical, grim, cool apartness-- a fantasy incarnation by Melville of his own apartness as a filmmaker. But a Samurai is not defined essentially by a Supercool Stoical Solitude-- he is defined by his (hopefully, if he is any good) indomitability in battle, his expertise versus his opponents, psychologically and physically. A stoical solitude may be a nuance of the discipline required for him to ultimately summit the pool of samurai and reign supreme as Most High Elite Lone Wolf. But it is not the discipline itself.

Yet the desire to APPEAR eastern is a very western tendency. Eastern expertise & wisdom is silently humble & doesn't forewarn/telecast it's danger in advance. Le Samouria teeter-totters at times as an exposition of the QUALITIES OF MASTERY evident on the person of a man who also has THAT CERTAIN SOMETHING that girls & young men admire-- while at the same time exhibiting a deficit of ACTUAL MASTERY. And forgive me for this, o members of the fairer sex, but I find it extremely hard to picture this kind of lone wolf incarnation of tigerish bushido putting his (and his employer's) fate almost entirely in the hands of a female WHO IS INVOLVED WITH ANOTHER, UNKNOWN MAN!!!!

It's incredible, but... I still do enjoy watching this film here & there. But the above gnaws me to no end. Love/hate relationship. But yes DH, Melville is warping a whole HODGEPODGE of elements, emptying them all of their essential meaning (and in all actuality, Value i e what it truly means to be a samurai), to tell the story he wants, his way, regardless of contradictions and extreme absurdity.

[ben d banana]

While logic would certainly dictate that it's not too sharp to go strutting around in the murder clothes, is that not all part of the Jef Costello character's all encompassing iciness? His apartment, his expression, his human interaction, the manner in which he faces death, etc. He directly stares down the closest thing to an eye witness and lets her live (part of his code?), he shows nothing in the police line-up or under interrogation, and he has an airtight alibi. If his outfit were to change would that not infer a crack in his shell?

As for the lovely train platform shot and Jef's lack of alertness, the obvious counter would be that if he was not prepared for the potential of such danger he surely would have been killed, not grazed, from such close range. It's safe to say that he knows his woman as well.

Mostly though, Le Samourai is much more of a dream-like mood piece (and collection of its creator's influences regardless of how they fit, this forum has hosted this debate about Tarantino once or twice, right?), than a template for rationality. Melville's methods, like any director, either work for you or they don't.

[zedz]

I think the casting of Delon (and his ultra-minimalist performance) allows that icy coolness to soak up all sorts of complex nuances, and among them you can find Melville's critique of his 'perfect hero'. Don't forget that it is this very coolness (not his attire, which, as Melville is careful to point out, is shared by hundreds of other even more suspicious Parisians) that persuades the police inspector that Jef is the real killer, however airtight his alibi. Jef's impassivity passes for cool, but there are key points in the film where he's presented as a lost boy: that beautiful watery close-up through the car windscreen, and its matching shot at the end of the film, after the Metro chase, where the identical expression masks panic.

I also agree with ben d that Melville is pretty explicit that it is Jef's skill that allows him to survive the ambush on the bridge (he's shot at point-blank range and suffers only a graze?). To understand the construction of the character, you have to understand that Jef is all about business: he's the total professional. Hence his 'unpreparedness' for the doublecross (it's a professional arrangement, he's completed his side of the contract, why would there be a problem) and, presumably, his instant decision at the start of the film not to kill the singer. Clearly, he's cultivated a sense of invulnerability that's extremely useful from a professional standpoint, but which is also his hamartia in Melville's modern tragedy.

I'm really interested to read in this forum, and in several reviews of the disc, the opinions of people who weren't 'converted' by Le Samourai. I've seen the film many times, with lots of different people, and this is honestly the first time I've come across viewers who didn't 'get' it. So thanks for everyone for articulating their attitudes.

From my perspective, the film is pure cinema. It's like a piece of music, where you can follow the repetition and variation of specific motifs, reflect on the beauty of the overarching form and how Melville utilises it (he's composing in thriller, rather than sonata, form) and admire the precision of the individual performances (Delon on oboe) that make up the orchestration.

[HerrSchreck]

I'm really interested to read in this forum, and in several reviews of the disc, the opinions of people who weren't 'converted' by Le Samourai. I've seen the film many times, with lots of different people, and this is honestly the first time I've come across viewers who didn't 'get' it. So thanks for everyone for articulating their attitudes.

From my perspective, the film is pure cinema. It's like a piece of music, where you can follow the repetition and variation of specific motifs, reflect on the beauty of the overarching form and how Melville utilises it (he's composing in thriller, rather than sonata, form) and admire the precision of the individual performances (Delon on oboe) that make up the orchestration.

I'm also interested by this forum, where individuals maintain a sense of such personal possession for their beloved examples of fine cinema-- as well as perception of this board as an intellectual competition rather than an open exchange of independent voices-- that when they encounter those who do not participate in their own highly personalized view of a film, they proclaim this individual as unable to GET IT. One detects a subtle aroma of defensiveness akin to that of the filmmaker himself!

You'll note zedz, that my problem with the film lay primarily in those zones which illustrate, in my opinion, a particular naivete on Melville's part for the basic covering operations of street criminals tottering a step or two from the grave or prison-- the way that dangerous and endangered men compartmentalize critical information as a rule, and can never be caught by surprise due to assumption or something as adorably outdated (in that world) as trust(!). If you feel that walking around unnecessarily in your distinctive Hit Clothes is good Hit Man practice... if you think depending on the testimony of an unknown male quantity who is at the moment of his testimony going to be jealously & hurtfully discovering his woman is being doinked by said dependant hit-man... if you think-- competing lover or no competing lover-- that putting your freedom in the hands of a woman, and consecutively exposing said women to the torments of relentless police "breaking" & interrogation because you yourself have chosen the path of Murder For Money... if you think that discounting Double Cross simply because You Fulfilled Your End of the Bargain (but did Jef, since he got himself arrested?)... if you think the above are good Street Crime Demeanor, insuring long life, and if you think such comportment and trust for unknown quantities and grey areas among the slime of the underworld and police should earn the bearer the appellation Modern Samurai... well that's your option.

You'll recall that in my first post on this flick I professed an admiration for the film despite my opinion vis a vis it's credibility holes. And you'll also note that it was I who proclaimed my own entrancement by it's receptivity to personal poetic nuance, it's similarity to music the way it reverbs in the head and cycles back at the viewer during downtime, creating a sense of urgency to get your ass back home to slap on these ever morphing zones of poetic soulfulness. I experience what you experience most satisfyingly. But for me, having seen so many killers go down the tubes via such rudimentary errors, if those elements of criminal naivete were resident in a filmmaker I admire even more than Melville (say, Dreyer, Murnau, Epstein, Tarkovsky, Leni, Bresson, Dupont, Mamoulian, Pabst, Pudovkin, Dovzhenko, Parajanov, etc) I would still have to regretfully admit that my hero, despite his mastery of film grammar, blinked in stone killer-ville in this project.

Lastly-- there is no such thing as not "getting it" when it comes to enjoying film. Nobody is 'obligated' to like a film. One can 'get' 1+1=2. When it comes to the work of another artist, we are all just fans discussing what we love. Ultimately, LE SAMORAI is a bit of a silly story on it's face-- I'd advise against taking it too seriously. If you see a hit man walking & behaving it such a fashion, don't get too attached to him-- he's not long for the world. His behavior is screaming Very Serious Intense HitMan. Maybe it's because I'm a lifelong NYC resident raised on the mean streets of the 1970's Bronx and have seen such above-mentioned Unknown Quantities do in many a hardboiled careful schmecker. If you think every professional criminal would watch that film and say "realistic portrayal of the most successful men I've known"... or if you even believe that every film scholar on the surface of the earth worth his salt views that film and says "Pure Cinema Required To Be Liked", then a bit of horizon exposure might be required.

We live in an age of critics. I just read a quote by Hoberman where he wrote (paraphrasing) "To not get Bresson is to not get the whole of cinema..." Gary Indiana wrote in the Pickpocket insert "whoever didn't weep at the end of Au Hasard Balthazar should be hit with a Mack truck outside the theater." That's a statement only a critic could make. Here you have a guy, a young man who had an ambition in life, grew up and now has a job, and has now determined it is his privelege to lay down Make Or Break Requirements for the whole of the human race that appreciates quality cinema. You'd be hard-pressed to find a filmmaker carrying around that kind of naked anger around with him. That is a statement by a critic targeting-- and distinguishing himself exclusively from-- other critics. Now, notwithstanding that I adore Bresson and "got" him immediately, a statement like that is so irritatingly clannish-- it's the sort of meaningless drivel that arms right wing imbeciles with permission to hurl "elitist" condemnations at the media. Cinema is not math. One may behold an absolutely beautiful, yet indiosyncratic-- maybe even iconoclastic-- woman and fall in love at first sight. Another may be annoyed or bored by her... yet were the former to say that the latter "does not understand the whole of women" is to insult the latter's completely valid lifelong enjoyment of many wonderful, fascinating women.

Let's remember we are talking about love, not math. We all obviously have a love for quality, eclectic cinema, with the fact of the board itself acting as a sort of qualifier. One may love Beethoven but not enjoy Bartok or Stravinsky... that doesn't mean they don't "get" those more unconventional 20th Century composers. I love Zappa's instrumental music-- many don't. I think he's the greatest musical genius of the 20th Century. But most people only know Titties & Beer and Don't eat the Yellow Snow: yet rather than proclaim those who've not looked deeper as failing to understand the whole of music, I enjoy my obscure private passion with all 60-plus albums, most on vinyl. These are matters of the heart, primarily. Enjoy the human variety-- argue for it. And remember-- we're all just fans. In the end, Le Samourai is in my opinion a quaint, stylish little film to be enjoyed mostly by the heart. The head can identify the fact that Melville himself has absorbed a wealth of preexisting film grammar. It is not overly complex, groundbreaking or challenging, in my opinion. It's a comic book dressed up as an atmospheric thriller with touches of American style and european-eastern film grammar.

[HerrSchreck]

You know this film a heck of a lot better than I do, but on this one point I'd suggest that maybe you're having too un-nuanced a response- certainly one feels the TEMPTATION to idolize Delon, as you've described- but there's an interview in the DVD booklet in which Melville calls Jef a "schizophrenic", so J-P clearly had mixed feelings. I wouldn't call the mood of the film 'gentle'- the surface feels gentle, but it ripples with nervous energy; Delon's "cool" is precisely inimitable, an intensely disciplined personal style of gesture & self-control; but it seemed to me a cool that was MAINTAINED, stoically/neurotically- a coolness laid over an underlying fearful, vulnerable self. Jef Costello never struck me as, in the sort of Hollywood way you seem to mean it, cool to his core.

Maybe I'm committing my own mis-reading of Delon's gestures, eye movements, etc.- but his stoical 'cool' strikes me not as a masculine fantasy of power&poise but as something deeply repressive.

That's in my opinion the beauty of the best this film has too offer: you see beneath the icy unflinching exterior a fear and vulnerability-- others see an exaggerated comic book type character. Others see different elements. That's the beauty of the fullness of those "empty" zones of the film. In the insert to the Criterion disc a desire was expressed to see Delon flop back onto his bed busting out in laughter to neutralize all his preceding macho seriousness; I feel such a disharmonious moment would disrupt the continuity established for the character and raise non-poetic questions about Melvilles design of the character. Jef either is that stone cold stoical or is not. There's a kid in me that (when the street naivete in the script doesn't bug me) sinks into the film and likes seeing Jef as stone cold perfection-- a true Samurai: disciplined, conditioned, a man with a warrior's heart that is never moved, but only moves others. He cannot be Affected-- no one can have that honor. Only he can close those issues that affect him most... including his own death.

I confess to having absolutely no idea what the hell JPM is even talking about vis a vis Jef being a schizo: a couple trackback-zoom in's and now he's a SCHIZO? Because he doesn't want to be diverted from his mission timetable (or cultivate a witness to his movements & presence in a stolen car which may or may not be viewed outside the victim's club) and therefore dismisses the flirtation at the traffic light, we're supposed to construe he's SCHIZO? What in god's name in JPM talking about? That to me sounded like some kind of oddball after-the-fact add-on idea. I find it very hard to believe Delon was acting with the understand Jef was schizo, or that Melville directed him so. Again, if he really had this idea in his head in realtime, then Melville appropriated social elements without at all acquiring a genuine understanding of the reality of these elements. How could a schizophrenic be a hitman? A cool hypercontrolled Jef type hitman? subject to the hearing of voices, possible hallucination, wild bipolar swings of mood and bursts of nightmarish panic and trembling paranoia even during moments of calm, yet maintain the cool calm unperturbed exterior exhibited by Jef Costello. Isolation doesn't equal schizo anymore than it equals samurai. One might call Jef an actual christian monk simply because he lives in isolation.

[HerrSchreck]

If you want an orgy of egos I couldn't recommend better than a_f_b.

AFB? (I don't know what that is.)

I hear you my man-- I obviously expect it, having jumped loudly into the ring here myself. Inevotible moments where dominance trumps substance, owing to audience presence. It's just a pet peeve of mine... People want to distinguish themselves to such a degree that they forget that THEY ARE NOT THE FILMMAKER, and appropriate his own high pride for the work. Being a fan is not an art.

Knots not knotted or clotted, hottentot. On to the next shot.

Cest la guerre!

[Lino]

If you want an orgy of egos I couldn't recommend better than a_f_b.

AFB? (I don't know what that is.)

http://movies.groups.yahoo.com/group/a_film_by/

[Andre Jurieu]

Did zedz' comments really sounds so harsh? I didn't think they were particularly condescending or caustic, and I don't believe anyone on the forum is saying that an opinion that finds some of Melville's techniques to be flawed is unreasonable. I believe his use of the term "get it" was only meant to point out the simplicity of the phrase and the how ineffective the term is in conveying the merit of various interpretations - hence the quotation marks. I sort of thought zedz found the dissenting opinions to be valid.

Also, I don't know if Melville meant Jef is literally a Schizo. Perhaps he just means Jef may display a few characteristics of a schizo personality.

[zedz]

Wow. I leave the room for a minute and look what happens. I think Herr Schreck has completely misapprehended my comments. The points I was making about this film were that
1) it's a case where the responses on this forum have shown me a completely different take on the film than I'd previously experienced - which I find fascinating and am keen to learn more about; and
2) this is a film where one's admiration of it seems to rely to an inordinate degree on suspension of disbelief and surrender to its rhythm and syntax. I distinguished between those who "got it" (i.e. found it superb on a formal level and considered plot analysis beside the point) and those who weren't sufficiently 'swept away' by the style to disregard the problems in logic or 'realism' (which seems to me to be the least of Melville's concerns in this film).

There's no question of superiority for one view or the other, and I thought I'd explained pretty clearly why I subscribed to a particular view. You're welcome to disagree (I don't "get" orchestral Zappa, but I don't lose any sleep over it), but there's no need to view disagreement as a personal attack (a particularly left-field inference since I wasn't even responding to your post).

[zedz]

Absolutely. It's interesting to note the one poster who simply doesn't like the movie - in itself this is fascinating to me as I want to know why (and Narshty gives his reasons, which are completely credible.)

Indeed. Critiquing the film on the grounds of realism is all well and good, but it's not something you can really respond to - like the complaint that in real life nobody would burst into song and dance the way they do in The Band Wagon (or that the Girl Hunt ballet would be impossible to stage). I'm far more interested in hearing more from viewers who don't respond to the film's style, and until this recent release I'd never struck this reaction (and I've seen it many times, with dozens of people, laden with all manner of cinematic baggage).

Discussing films is all about having disagreements, be they radical or minute (I'm sure David and I have got differences of opinion about this film we both adore, and they'd be just as worthy of exploration if we could figure out what they are), and the better people can articulate their disagreements, the better the quality of the discussion.

[tasog37]

I picked this up last week, loved it, and have since watched it twice more.

I was bored today and got to thinking about the film. Now, correct me if I am wrong but I do not remember any aspect of the dvd mentioning this.

This contains spoilers!!! Do not read below this bolded text unless you have viewed the film already.

But did anybody think that Jeff Costello could be symbolic for Jesus Christ? If you look at you'll find a few similarities:

Initials: J.C.
and
Age: Jane (his alibi) says Jeff is thirtyish. Jesus was 33.

Also, if you really think about it, Jesus died to save others right? Through Jeff's death he saved both Jane ("Don't worry. I'll work it all out.") and Valerie the piano player (his contract).

Just thought I'd throw that on the table. It really suprises me I've never seen it mentioned anywhere, but maybe it's just common knowledge and I never realized or something. It makes sense to me though.

[HerrSchreck]

Discussing films is all about having disagreements, be they radical or minute (I'm sure David and I have got differences of opinion about this film we both adore, and they'd be just as worthy of exploration if we could figure out what they are), and the better people can articulate their disagreements, the better the quality of the discussion.

Hey Zedz-- Don't take my last week's post personal-- I've read many of your posts for weeks before I finally clicked into this forum and there was an analysis of yours (among other posts) of Seven Samurai where you (I think it was you) gently but fairly-- and devastatingly-- rebuked a poster who didn't understand the global admiration(!?) for the film, and the post was so good you had me nearly jumping around the room.

I really only pop on here on weekend overnites here at NBC/Universal on 12 hr shifts where it's usually dead enough to have the time. It wasn't necessarily you personally I was responding to, it was the critic-syndrome (which I was getting an overdose of in the press & PICKPOCKET Criterion insert) which I absolutely despise, that of the critic-as-instructor, of turning art into science, of turning aesthetic pleasure into exams providing entre into some kind of rarified air. You above clarified what you meant by "get it"-- usually, however, that phrase (saying "the guy just doesn't get it") carries an air of condescention.

I want to reiterate my affection for LE SAMOURAI, despite my feeling that a director who travailed a bit closer to the hardboiled rhythms of authentic street life (Scorcese, Fuller, 2 generational examples) wouldn't have exposed the occasional naivete of Melville. At the same time, I think there might have been a danger of trade off, that in the hands of the aforementioned two directors, the flick might have lost some of it's hypnotic spaciousness.

As to those statements by Indiana & Hoberman about Bresson (which I think is very relevant to LE SAMOUORAI) i e "...those who don't understand Bresson don't understand the whole of cinema"--

I think this connects back to the statement by about this film a couple pages back on this post by a poster who said, that by the end of the film he felt "wastefully empty". The kind of cinema Melville is creating here is, I believe, part of a very unique (much more so, even in '67) school of technique which is going to be very difficult to process for viewers new to the style. One can see in SAMOURAI a clear understanding of the idea of quietude, of poetic spaciousness, resonance, of film "harmony", which by that time had been utilized & mastered by Carl Dreyer for at least 35 years (starting with Vampyr, if not earlier). It was a technique that subsequently found a home with Bresson, Tarkovsky, and goes on today with newcomers such as Zvyagintsev. Yet it's a technique that is vey difficult for viewers of Conventional Film... or almost All Other Kinds of Film I daresay... to process. Melville's film is not as difficult to process as Bresson's in that there are professional performers giving professional-style performances, yet LE SAMOURAI still very much requires the active participation of the viewer as do the films of the aforementioned directors. Most people sit back and expect to be "fed" 100% of a film, and most of their ideas of "quality cinema" constitutes films with images of above-par beauty and/or stories or performances so powerful that they "give you a lot to think about". Key word being "Give". Meaning that the film delivers the sum of it's elements.

The cinema of SAMOURAI, or lack of event in the best of Antonioni, as well as the vast silences & soft pacing of Dreyer, Tarkovsky, Bresson, et al is very puzzling to the unitiated. They've not been 'trained' to even comprehend the idea of "giving" to a film... of that idea being of such dire utter centrality to the poetic nature of certain resonant pictures that if they cannot get a to and fro going with it the film will guarantee to fall completely flat and functionless. I recall years ago, a key individual who had a lot to do with my appreciation of obscure cinema, who turned me on to the (then) sad fact that, unlike music & literature the greatest masterpieces of the medium were for the most part completely commercially unavailable... collecting required endless intercontinental TV taping, reel-swapping, videoing wall-projections, and trading trading trading... this was a guy who entire four room apartment was minimum waist high with thousands upon thousands (and thousands) of videotapes: endless silents, hundreds of obscure pre-codes, a room full of even more obscure docs, rarest noirs, Japanese, euro, all of it. I mean the guy was really a little mental over film. He had no life-- all he did was watch films, and his social life revolved entirely around enlarging his collection. Yet the guy just couldn't understand VAMPYR or just any post JOAN OF ARC Dreyer, beyond the nice cinematography. Forget about Bresson-- he'd go to sleep instantly. Even old washed out prints of Bresson were a revelation to me but at the mention of the name he'd make a face like he'd just bit into dogshit. He actively disliked the guy, wasn't even neutral about him. But I'd never go near pronouncing a guy like him as "not getting the whole of cinema" because Bresson doesn't get him going.

Which is why the statements I mentioned by Indiana & Hoberman annoy me. Asking the common viewer to automatically be able to get past what on their face are some of the worst "performances" in the history of all the cinema is absurd. If the conventional viewer cannot hang their hat upon the performance of the principal actor-- never mind annoyed by the repeated downcast-upflicking eyes of the entire stiff cast-- they are doomed to be repeatedly "kicked out" of the film, out of belief-suspesion. The same happens to some viewers in a film like SAMOURAI, which is so sparse on it's face they perceieve a "wastefully empty" experience in the end.

God bless these cinematic delicacies, frickin disgusting to some, an acquired taste for others... strong stuff from all angles.

Did zedz' comments really sounds so harsh? I didn't think they were particularly condescending or caustic, and I don't believe anyone on the forum is saying that an opinion that finds some of Melville's techniques to be flawed is unreasonable. I believe his use of the term "get it" was only meant to point out the simplicity of the phrase and the how ineffective the term is in conveying the merit of various interpretations - hence the quotation marks. I sort of thought zedz found the dissenting opinions to be valid.

Also, I don't know if Melville meant Jef is literally a Schizo. Perhaps he just means Jef may display a few characteristics of a schizo personality.

Hi aviator; I take it you're looking for an answer from me to your question-- zedz' comments were definitely not caustic, and were not anywhere near as emphatic or protracted as my own. His comments were in response to one guy (maybe two) vis a vis one film; mine, as I signalled to zedz above, were a sort-of-tract triggered by zedz' post constituting the drop that overflowed the pot vis a vis my irritation with warring critics. Critics are non-creative creatures who make a parasitic living advising the world of the soleness of their perfection as Comprehenders of the Important Work of Others... which allegedly is very Important Work.

It was the hint of being placed in the very very very small-- population allegedly one or two-- category of those who didn't "get" it, a category which didn't sound much like The Smart People Category according to that particular quote, that caused me to open up a general line on a style of thinking I find increasingly prevalent today among younger folks amid the anonymity of the web-- though less so on this site, which I mostly like (though it has it's smarmy aggressive moments, see post-subject). I do see tempers flare from time to time. I'm getting a vibe that kids (not that you're a kid zedz, this isn't aimed at you) today are being set a very poor example by their seniors vis a vis the state of the national dialogue, the amount of hatred in politics today. I catch a whiff of it in reviews, across the whole of the web. The resentment seems to stem from a state of competition... for recognition, for self-differentiation, I don't know.

As to JPM's allegation that Jeff is a schizophrenic, I'll take it to mean that he meant, er, Jeff Is A Schizophrenic. One thing JPM was mind-bendingly good at is nuance & modulation, when required. I'll stick with his explanation.

You a pro-bono lawyer or public advocate in real life?

Graf Orlok

[Andre Jurieu]

You a pro-bono lawyer or public advocate in real life?

No, though in my spare time I apparently try to be a non-creative creature who make a parasitic pastime advising the world of the soleness of their perfection.

The Aviator/Occasional Comprehender of the Important Work of Others ... which I'm apparently alleging is very Important Work

[zedz]

Thanks for the clarification, Max. I share your impatience with prescriptive cinephilia, and there are plenty of candidates for x in the formula "if you don't love x, you don't love cinema" towards whom I celebrate my indifference.

That kind of argument, and its close cousin "if you don't understand x in the way I understand x, then you don't understand x at all," are designed to shut down discussion and do turn film appreciation into a pissing contest. Of course, if you put up a wall between the participants, most of the piss splashes back on the pisser. The recent standoff in the Pickpocket thread demonstrated what a dead end this approach is: increasingly convoluted and testy position statements and very little discourse. The reductio ad absurdam can probably be found buried back in the Andrey Rublyov thread.