Le doulos

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.

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!

Le Doulos is not as well-known as Melville's later colour pictures, but very much undeservedly so. Gangster films rarely manage to surprise their audience with the plot (unless they sacrifice logic as so often in Raymond Chandler's stories), but here we have an exception. This one is entirely logical and entirely surprising; an extraordinary gangster story of trust, betrayal and code of honour. It is impossible to correctly guess the outcome even when you are through 2/3 of the film.

Highly recommended.

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.