Le Samouraï [The Samurai] ***** (1967, Alain Delon, Nathalie Delon, François Périer) – Classic Movie Review 2818

Jean-Pierre Melville’s austere 1967 neo noir gangster movie Le Samouraï motors on Alain Delon’s enigmatic star turn and Henri Decaë’s stark cinematography in Eastmancolor.

‘There is no solitude greater than a samurai’s, unless perhaps it is that of a tiger in the jungle’ – The Book of Bushido.

Co-writer/director Jean-Pierre Melville’s austere 1967 neo noir gangster movie Le Samouraï is an ambitious, atmospheric and thrilling masterpiece. It showcases Alain Delon doing what he does best – playing a handsome, enigmatic but coldly ruthless character.

Delon’s character here is a lone perfectionist contract killer by the name of Jef Costello, who lives his Spartan existence by a samurai-style personal code of honour. He plans his hits so carefully that he never gets caught.

But, one night, he needs to establish an alibi after killing a night-club owner and being seen by witnesses, and falls in love with the club’s black piano-player Valérie (Cathy Rosier), who betrays him by mistake.

The cast also includes Delon’s then wife Nathalie as Jane Lagrange, François Périer as the Superintendent [Le Commissaire], Jacques Leroy as the man in the passageway, Michel Boisrond as Wiener, Robert Favart as the bartender, Jean-Pierre Posier as Olivier Rey, Catherine Jourdan as the hatcheck girl, and Roger Fradet, Carlo Nell and Robert Rondo as police inspectors.

Comedian François Périer is cast against type as the police Superintendent.

Acting-wise, everything here is done with a look, a gesture or a glance in a mythical revenge story, sparked by Melville’s spare, chilly direction and by Henri Decaë’s stark but romantically unreal cinematography in Eastmancolor.

Melville said: ‘I wanted the opening shots to be predominately gray, so I used a female bullfinch because it is just black and white, without the male’s orange breast.’ The caged bird shown as Jef Costello’s pet was the only casualty of the fire that destroyed Melville’s studio in 1967.

Studio Jenner, Melville’s private film studio, was destroyed by fire while Le Samouraï was shooting early in July 1967. Melville called the fire ‘suspicious’ and moved the production to another studio.

The 95-minute English-language version The Samurai is cut and dubbed and a shadow of the five-star original French version Le Samouraï (105 minutes) finally released to enormous deserved acclaim in Britain in 1993. Bit by bit, the film has achieved legendary status, and is enormously influential, directly (as with Michael Mann’s Collateral) or indirectly. Imbued with similar sensibilities, John Boorman’s neo noir Point Blank was made in America the same year.

Films by Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, Francis Ford Coppola, Jim Jarmusch, John Woo, Johnnie To, David Fincher, Bernardo Bertolucci, Aki Kaurismäki, Takeshi Kitano, Michael Mann, Georges Lautner, Nicolas Winding Refn, Luc Besson, Joel and Ethan Coen and Rainer Werner Fassbinder (Love Is Colder Than Death) have all been inspired by Le Samouraï.

This perfect film is co-written by Georges Pellegrin and the score is by François De Roubaix.

The film has no dialogue for almost ten minutes.

The film was released on 25 October 1967. It did not get to the UK till November 1969 for the BFI London Film Festival, before its belated release in 1971. An English-dubbed recut version was released in the US in 1972 as The Godson, capitalising on the success of the unrelated The Godfather.

Melville wrote the film for Delon, took the script to him and told him the title was Le Samouraï. Delon showed him his bedroom containing just a leather couch and a samurai blade on the wall.

This is Delon’s wife Nathalie’s first film, but he filed for divorce after the film wrapped.

RIP Nathalie Delon, the glamorous French cinema legend, who starred in Le Samouraï opposite her husband Alain Delon. They married on 13 August 1964 and divorced on 14 February 1969. Nathalie was granted custody of their son Anthony Delon. She died of cancer on 21 January 2021 in Paris, aged 79.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2818

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com

Alain Delon in Le Samouraï (1967).

Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Love Is Colder Than Death (1969).