Le doulos

Jean Pierre Melville was a brilliant and fatalistic filmmaker who hardly found any recognition by anyone in his own home country except from other filmmakers. Only abroad was he given credit as a film director of exceptional talent. For example, his turn as film director for Le Doulos(1961) exposes him as a filmmaker of three dimensional skills. In films like Le Doulos(1961), things such as expressionism become an essential part of Melville's cannon of films.

Jean Paul Belmondo is one of the most famous French tough guys besides Alain Deleon, and Yves Montond. In a way the Silen character played by the actor can be seen as Michel of Breathless(1960) if Michel had lived and became an informer. Belmondo was one of the coolest actors from French cinema for his time. The person of Silen is hard to pin down because one never knows whose side he is on.

Minor classic of French Noir especially in the 1950s-1960s. There are two reasons why I think it to be. First, the story and plot are compelling to follow. Two, many of the essences of film making is brought together to Le Doulos(1955) with some good film execution and competent screenwriting.

Some ingenious plot twists are used to keep the viewer on his or her toes. These plot twists are done in a manner that makes sense and yet retains some form of unpredicability. They are never used for the sake of using them nor are badly wasted as for instance in Wild Things(1998). The plot twists of Le Doulos(1961) are examples of what was one of many big trademarks in the French gangster picture.

Le Doulos(1961) deals with small time gangsters whose beliefs in honor and loyalty are pretty slim. In the gangster world of Melville the qualities of honor and loyalties are nearly extinct and replaced by betrayal and greed. Almost every character in Le Doulos(1961) is someone who can not be trusted and has a duel nature about them. The director never paints a romantic outlook for the criminals of Le Doulos(1961) and that's what makes it effective as a crime thriller.

Narcissism is a major motif for Le Doulos(1961) especially in the behavior of Silen. In many of Melville's main characters from films such as Le Doulos(1961) and Le Samurai(1967) there is a narcissistic feeling that compensates for the emptyness that surrounds their inner body. This is especially true for the Melville characters of Silen and Jeff whose only loyalties are to themselves. That is one element that makes Jean Pierre Melville a fatalistic filmmaker.

The acting in Le Doulos has its shares of ups and downs depending on an individual actor's performance but for the main two the acting is quite good. Jean Paul Belmondo exhibits his strength as an actor in playing the informer, Silen. Serge Reggiani as Maurice Faugel plays his character with a dogged tiredness that is reminicent of Jean Servais's performance in Rififi(1955). Contains a small co starring role for Michel Piccoli who became a major leading actor for many well known film directors including Luis Bunuel, Jean Luc Godard, and Claude Chabrol.

Might be the most underrated picture of Jean Pierre Melville's gangster motion pictures. Does not get the same acclaim as the director's best..I.E., Bob Le Flambeur(1955), Le Samurai(1967), or even Le Cercle Rouge(1970). Le Doulos(1961) has many themes that Jean Pierre Melville return over and over again in his crime films. It is very good at developing tension that bursts open like a cantaloupe.

Le Doulos's direction gets some terrific visual ques from Melville as well as a tight execution of plotting. Jean Paul Belmondo was Jean Pierre Melville's second alter ego after Alain Delon which helped make them into a great actor-director combo. The Paris locations are beautifully breathtaking and fantasticly pictured on film for Le Doulos(1961). The camera and the black and white photography contributes to making the locations a main part of the action.

German film director, Volker Schlondorf first worked in films as an assistant director like Le Doulos(1961) for Jean Pierre Melville(1961)[Volker Schlondorf must have been heavily influenced by Melville when later becoming a film director himself]. The heist sequence of Le Doulos(1961) is not quite on the grandeur level of Rififi(1955) but does fine on its own in a low key way. The ending deals with redemption and the price the two character suffer for achieving their goal of redemption. Le Doulos(1961) is a French variation of John Ford's The Informer(1935) that uses different ideas and, different results, and different plot importances.

Another tale of dishonor among thieves and another masterpiece from Jean- Pierre Melville but this one's a little more complicated than most. "Le Doulos" is slang for a hat but in criminal circles it also means a police informer. The informer here is Jean-Paul Belmondo and he seems to be playing one side against the other, police and crooks, but to what end? The movie is tortuously plotted until it's all very neatly and beautifully tied up at the end and it pays homage, not just to the great Hollywood gangster movies, but to such classically poetic French films of the thirties such as "Le Jour se Leve" and "Les Quai Des Brumes". Belmondo is, of course, magnificent and SergeReggiani is suitably fatalistic as the gangster who sets everything in motion. An absolutely essential movie.

How I would've loved to see this movie on the big-screen; as it is, one of the only set-backs in watching it is that the current Kino VHS copy is of poor quality, with the kind of subtitles you can't read when it's with a white background, and the aspect ratio is off at times. But it is a kind of "lost" classic in some ways, harder to find than Jean-Pierre Melville's films on Criterion DVD (Le Cercle Rouge, Bob le Flabeur, and Le Samourai), but still as rich in his own style than with his other films. If at times it might not seem as much Melville as usual, it may be because it's based off a book by Pierre Lesou. But Melville still instills his distinctive flair at making old-fashioned crime stories involving criminals with codes of honor, police with some level of respect and intelligence, and a perfection of dead-pan dialog and silences.

The film also includes a star of the times- Jean-Paul Belmondo plays Silien, a sort of smooth operator of underdog criminals, who is friends with Maurice Faugel (Serge Reggiani, a man with soul in his face if that makes sense). Faugel, at the start of the film, does something that may or may not have been the right thing, but he still has to hide it, in the midst of gearing up for a heist (again, this IS Melville). The heist doesn't go as planned. There's also been another murder, which Silien cannot stand, even as he is placed in the realm of a police investigation. I hesitate to describe much else of the story; on a first viewing one may think there is too much exposition at times (in particular when Silien reveals some of the details later in the film to Faugel, with fades to flashbacks and so forth), and the double-crossings that occur make the story very twisty, in the perfunctory crime-novel sense of course. In some ways it's a little more novelistic in the storytelling than a film like Le Cercle Rouge.

The style of Le Doulos is a sumptuous feast for the eyes and senses. It isn't always fast and it isn't always slow, but when Melville wants a level of suspense he somehow brings it. Like all his other crime films, he's working in a framework akin to the American genre pictures of the late 30's and 40's- tough guys almost always shielding their emotions, kind to most women but not all (there's an interrogation scene by Silien with a woman that is effective, and rather disturbing in just the set-up of the woman), and a kind of fate that is and isn't expected with the characters. One might even try and make naturalistic comparisons with the story; Faugel with his own problems, Silien with his lonely but loyal life to his few friends, the police's professionalism.

But what really catches me with Le Doulos, like the best moments in Melville's films, is how he subverts the kind of expectations of the classic style of the 40's American crime films - dark shadows in the background coming into the foreground, creeping in on the characters, and usually basic camera moments - with the 'new-wave' sensibilities. There are certain shots that are stunning, some of which elude me even after seeing the film three times. The Silien scene I mentioned is one, but also note the hand-held use as the robbers run away from the cops after the heist; the extraordinary long-take in the police investigation (you almost forget that there isn't a cut); the occasionally very unusual angles put onto characters to add a certain 'kick' to the feeling behind it.

Despite the straightforward attitude of the characters, there is emotion behind the style. Many have said Melville's films are 'cool', very 'cool', or sometimes too 'cold' for their own good. Both could be attributed. But the coolness outranks everything else; Belmondo, by the way, is so cool in this film, so unflinchingly so at times (even if in sometimes a little ineffectual), it makes his performance in Breathless seem amateurish. Coincidentally, he is more like the Bogart character here than in Godard's film. Reggiani, too, gives an excellent supporting performance, usually without having to say anything. The climax of the film, where the characters come to a head in the 'Halo', is like the icing on the cake of the film.

Jean-Pierre Melville's direction is a glorious tribute to classic American crime films of the 1940's and early 50's but has also a strong touch of originality. The story is set in the early 1960's Paris, but these criminals seem to live in a world of their own. It's a Hollywood film-noir underworld, where men constantly wear hats and trench coats like Humbrey Bogart, brandishing revolvers, drinking bourbon or scotch and driving big American cars, that look like tanks compared to small ordinary European vehicles around. The overall mood is dark and threatening and with the right kind of lightning and photography many scenes seem like epitomes of the best stuff the genre has ever offered.

Compared to its predecessors The Fingerman gives some new shine to the term 'hard boiled'. Women can still be fatal femmes in some sense, but mostly they get pushed around and are allowed attention only when men really need them. They are only there to pass information and sexual favors, nurse wounds and serve as minor helping hands. And when it comes to violence, they get the same rough treatment as any man.

Belmondo's role leans heavily to Dix Handley (Sterling Hayden) in John Huston's adaption of 'The Asphalt Jungle', only with a more visible dark side. His character is a strange and hypnotic mixture of honesty, treachery and bursts of sadistic violence. The way his tone of voice changes to more tender just before assault or murder is gripping. Serge Reggiani, although equally capable to violence, seems more mature and easier to identify with. Both men strongly overpower the happenings but not their own destinies. Fate still has its usual final word, as anyone familiar with characteristics of the genre well knows.

The plot with several flashbacks and changes of time and place may feel a little complex at the beginning, but opens up to be a very rewarding movie experience towards the end. This film easily equals and even surpasses many of its obvious paragons. Of the few Melville's films I have seen at this point this one became an instant favorite in a single viewing even beating the almighty Le Samurai. Very warmly recommended.

Made at pretty much the halfway point between Melville's Bob le Flambeur (1955) and Le Samourai (1967), Le Doulos contains elements of both. Belmondo plays Silien, a man thought by some to be a police informer. ("Doulos" means informer or Finger Man, which is the title in English.) Reggiani plays Maurice, who has just gotten out of prison and is getting involved with another robbery attempt. His friend Silien offers to help, and the film revolves around the tension over whether Silien is an informant or not. It's another exploration by Melville of the grey area between those who enforce the law and those who break it, of the uneasy yet powerful relationships that can develop between people on "opposite" sides of the line.

Belmondo and Reggiani are both excellent. The black and white photography by Nicholas Hayer - who also did Cocteau's Orphée and Clouzot's Le Corbeau - is superb, from the wonderfully atmospheric opening sequence (Melville may be THE master of opening sequences) to the stunning, Cocteau-like shot of a man staring into a mirror that closes the film. The plot line gets a bit complicated at times, with rival gangs, a previous jewel heist, murder, betrayals, love affairs, etc. Hard to follow. Which is to say, it's a classic example of film noir. And the jazzy soundtrack by Paul Misraki heightens the cool, noirish sensibility of the film. Whatever his failings as a director, Melville definitely knew how to create a great atmosphere.

Le Doulos is definitely worth checking out, especially by fans of film noir, Melville or Belmondo.