Le doulos

DOULOS: THE FINGER MAN (Jean-Pierre Melville - France/Italy 1962).

Jean-Paul Belmondo is the duplicitous Silien, underworld criminal and police informer and Serge Reggianni as the dogged villain Faugel. Belmondo, who normally is a much more outgoing actor, has to play a very distant role as a gangster, much different than the wanna-be gangster he played in "AU BOUT DE Soufflé" (1959) by Godard (I know it's not soufflé but the IMDb doesn't accept my correct spelling). That's probably why Alain Delon became Melville's first choice in his later films, because Delon naturally had a much more restrained performance.

Based on a novel from the famous série noire crime series, he made a film what he called 'my first real policier'. Perhaps there's a little too much emphasis on plot that has more than a few loopholes, as most film-noirs did, Melville's favorite inspiration for many of his films. I do think film-lovers are trying a little too hard to make this film into some kind of new forgotten masterpiece. By Melville standards, it still has quite a competent plot and does make sense but there's not really a central character like Bob in BOB LE FLAMBEUR or Jeff Costello in LE SAMOURAI to root for.

Melville very much belonged to the Parisian post-war intelligentsia who were infatuated with American literature, music and above all, film. He was an ardent film lover and reputedly saw at least five films a day for a long period of his life. In LE DOULOS his obsession with American cinema becomes apparent. They drive American cars (and the occasional cool Citroën), behave like gangsters in American crime films of the '40s and Melville loves to use newspaper headlines to heighten some of plot elements, just like Godard famously did in AU BOUT DE Soufflé. French Melville aficionado Ginette Vincendeau put it best: 'Melville was a director very much influenced by American cinema but by no means someone who made copies of American films; in fact, he was a very French filmmaker'.

I wasn't instantly captivated by this film as with LE SAMOURAI (1967), but the whole atmosphere, the ambiance, stunning camera movements and an almost perfect music score still make this a very agreeable Melville. This is cinema with style and class and a quintessential addition to the French gangster genre.

Camera Obscura --- 8/10

More often than not, French gangster films that owe so much to early American gangster films come off as cakes with more icing than cake. This is not the case with Jean-Pierre Melville, whose Bob le Flambeur is a powerful tale of a compulsive gambler who attempts to right his own life and the lives of those he cares for. In Le Doulos, the story focuses on a gangster, Maurice, just released from prison who immediately gets back on the other side of the law and begins to get involved in the ever-constant struggle between French police and organized crime.

This film obviously owes a great deal to early American gangster films, as so much of Melville does, but what makes it slightly different is the complexity of character and plot Melville injects into the story. There are numerous layers of action going on here; each character is as duplicitous as possible so motivations are always in question and the audience never really can tell who exactly is on which side until the final conclusion. Yet, it is never too confusing and never dull to watch as Melville invites us to explore closer the beautiful fluid camera work and the stunning and stark cinematography.

The acting is also quite effective, especially Serge Reggiani as the world-worn Maurice whose face says more than anything else, and French cinema legend Jean-Paul Belmondo as the too cool for his own good Silien. All in all, a very entertaining and well-made caper thriller that compared to today's shoot 'em ups consists of more than enough cake with the right amount of icing as well.

Le Doulos is a very good gangster noir from Jean-Pierre Melville. Like his other crime films its American influenced but with French style. It's really a recreation of the American film-noir of the 40's in 60's Paris. As such it's very stylised. Despite the time period, all of the actors look, act and dress like characters out of a hard-boiled movie from the 1940's. Trench coats and hats are the order of the day despite not being in the least bit in fashion in the 60's. The actors were all instructed to perform in a very controlled stylistic way that mimicked those old movies. This was seemingly something that Jean-Paul Belmondo found very unsatisfying, not surprising from an actor famed for working with Jean-Luc Godard whose style was extremely loose and off-the-cuff by comparison.

Like noir, this one has a cast of characters where none are good in the traditional sense. It's about a thief who has just been released from prison. He immediately gets involved in criminal activity but is sold out to the police. He suspects his best friend is a police informer ('le doulos'). It's about betrayals, friendship and people assuming the worst of each other; the honour/dishonour of thieves. Of course, this being a noir, things do not run in a straightforward manner and there are several twists and turns before we reach the end. Look out also for an early cinematic nude scene featuring Fabienne Dali who also made a memorable appearance as a sexy witch in Mario Bava's Gothic horror film Kill, Baby…Kill!

Described by some as an example of 'film noir' or even as an early 'neo-noir', this is the work of auteur, Jean Pierre Melville and as such less a genre work and more his very own. Unlike the American originals, largely spewed out in their dozens and at great speed and low cost, often as B pictures geared to appeal to as large an audience as possible with elements as sensational as could be got away with, this Melville picture has more lofty aims. The director was in the French resistance during the Nazi occupation during war and as he shows here is much more interested in the world of police informers and collaboration than the more classic 'noir' tropes of isolation, alienation and the temptations of the 'femme fatale'. Nevertheless there are some wonderful sequences, like the opening shot on location beneath the railway lines and we have cinematographer, Nicolas Hayer {Panique (1946) and Orphee (1950)} to thank for these because Melville, largely financing his own projects, was always working to a budget and much of his interior studio set pieces here are well below expected standards and jar horribly with the more expansive and expressionist exteriors. Being French, the film also has far too much dialogue and a few scenes in the middle and an extended one towards the end are a considerable drag on what should have been a much more snappy affair. Finally, whilst I acknowledge that there are several US 'noir' classics that have nonsensical of difficult to follow plots, this effort seems far too unnecessarily complicated for the simple tale that it ultimately is.

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.