Hi all, and welcome back to rumblewrites. This week’s post is another film review, this time of the Franco-Italian neo-noir film Le Samouraï. If you enjoy this post, you can check out my other reviews here, and subscribe for more:
Summary
Il n'y a pas de plus profonde solitude que celle du samouraï.
Si ce n'est celle d'un tigre dans la jungle...
Peut-être...
There is no greater solitude than that of a samurai.
Save that of a tiger in the jungle…
Perhaps…
[translation my own]
The opening quote of Le Samouraï is attributed to Le livre du samouraï by Le Bushido, a fictional creation by filmmaker Jean-Pierre Melville. This sets the tone of the film: this is the story of Jef Costello (Alain Delon), a contract killer and recluse who operates by his own personal, rigid code of honour.
It opens with Jef lying on his bed, smoking a cigarette. A staple in noir filmography. He is in a dingy room, half-illuminated by sunlight, surrounded by shades of grey and blue. His only companion is a bird which he keeps in a small cage by the window. We watch him get up and don a rather conspicuous outfit (lol):
before exiting his apartment and hot-wiring a car sat outside. He drives it to a garage where a man changes the number plates and hands Jef a gun. He drives away again. Throughout this entire opening sequence, not a single word is spoken.
Jef then arrives at the house of Jane (Nathalie Delon), his friend and (presumably) lover who agrees to help him establish an alibi for his next contract. That night, he carries it out, slipping into a nightclub and shooting a man sat in one of the back rooms. But as he is leaving, he is spotted by Valérie (Caty Rosier), a piano player at the club. They maintain eye contact for a moment, and Jef brushes past her to leave. For some reason, he has decided to let her live.
After disposing of his car and gun, Jef meets some men at a poker club to establish his planned alibi. Part way through the night, he is picked up by the police and pulled into a line-up for identification by staff from the nightclub. Valérie is in attendance, but claims not to know him. Quite why she does this is unknown both to us and to Jef himself: is she lying to protect him, or does she have links to the men who hired him?
He is released, and goes to collect his payment. He approaches a man waiting on a secluded bridge, but the man attacks Jef, who barely manages to escape with his life. Wounded, he goes in search of Valérie. They meet outside the nightclub and she drives him back to her place. But she refuses to talk, instead instructing him to phone her in 2 hours. So, he returns home and waits. He makes the call, but Valérie doesn’t answer. Moments later he is ambushed by the same man who attacked him on the bridge. But this time, the man is offers him money. Both for the contract he had already carried out, and for another...
Meanwhile, the police still view Jef as their main suspect. They bug his house and send a dozen officers to tail him on the Métro. There is an exciting chase-like sequence where Jef tries to shake them. Leaving the Métro, he then returns to the nightclub. He approaches Valérie as she is playing the piano and pulls a gun on her. But the police are lying in wait and shoot him before he has a chance to act. In the final moments, we see the police seize Jef’s gun and open it to find no bullets inside.
Analysis
This was a good, albeit strange, film. Let’s start with what I enjoyed:
The cinematography. I absolutely loved the use of light and colour throughout. The muted colour palette, focusing on greys and blues, and the restrained use of light, created a wonderful sense of solitude and foreboding. The shots of Jef’s silhouette in his coat and fedora, the rainy streets of Paris, most of the action happening at night. Chef’s kiss.
Delon’s performance. Jef is a stoic. He moves through life with fierce determination, operating exactly as he means to, but still concealing a slight sense of unease as he strives to blend into the streets of Paris.
The plot. It contains all the expected elements of noir: the killer, the cops, a love interest, the samurai-style code. But it works because of how little happens. There is action, sure, but it only comes at the end, after a long build-up of tension. We are first made to care about Jef (hard work considering how cold his character is), and we are left to speculate about the ending ourselves before it happens. In this way, the final action sequence is all the more exciting, and all the more rewarding. It felt a little slow at times, but honestly this was refreshing given how many films do action for action’s sake nowadays.
But now let’s get on to the reason I knocked a few stars off: the ending.
I was confused as to why Jef didn’t kill Valérie: she never gave him answers, presumably had links to the man who attacked him, and surely failing to carry out a contract goes against his whole modus operandi? Is this why he kills himself? Pretty emotional for such a stoic guy.
I actually had to Google the answer, and here are 3 possible options I’ve come up with:
Jef loved, or at least lusted after, Valérie. This would explain why he let her live originally, but little else. Plus, it would go against his whole character: he is impassive at best, and utterly detached from those around him.
Jef is trying to set her up. He’s been trying to shake the police ever since he was first picked up [here’s another question: his alibi was water-tight, so why were they so convinced it was him?]. If they already suspected her of lying about recognising him, maybe they’d switch their focus to her if they think she “caused” his death. But how could he be sure this would work? And why should he have to die to make it happen?
Jef is taking back control. Every aspect of his life has spiralled out of control over the course of this film, so this puts him back in the driver’s seat. He has fulfilled his contract, and thus stuck to his code, but also emancipated himself from the web in which he is now stuck. This is the option I lean towards, since this would explain his final words to Valérie: ‘I was paid to’. He’s trying to save her - warning her that they have turned against her too.
I understand that the point of the film wasn’t to spoon feed me answers, but it did take me an embarrassingly long time to come up with these options. And I’m still not entirely satisfied. It doesn’t help either that Le Samouraï has consistently been rated at 4 or 5 stars on all reviewing platforms, and is often hailed as one of the best crime films. Perhaps something was lost in translation, or I’m not as well-versed in French noir / the samurai code as I ought to be, but I was just left confused.
If you’ve seen Le Samouraï, what did you think? Am I being too harsh?