Le Samouraï

In Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Samouraï (1967), Alain Delon is like Michael Corleone at the end of the first Godfather. He’s dead-eyed and withdrawn; he lives to accomplish objectives that he spares nary a thought about; his girlfriend is an accessory, nothing more. Or is she? Although this is often called a great film, and Melville’s best—Army of Shadows, which features one of the most heart-rending executions in movie history, is a bona fide masterpiece—I don’t think it’s quite in the pantheon, or was meant to be. We see how Michael’s heart went cold; Le Samouraï is not—to borrow from Louis Malle’s The Fire Within—about a man with a heart to lose, but a brute force of nature. The title led me to expect an honorable killer, like Vito Corleone. The preface is from the book of Bushido: “There is no greater solitude than that of the samurai, unless it is that of the tiger of the jungle, perhaps.” The title should have been Le Tigre. But there’s more than one keyword in there, and they’re related. Delon lives in a scummy, unadorned flat. He’s not a disillusioned drinker like his film noir antecedents: He orders a whiskey and leaves it at the bar, and his apartment is stocked with Perriers. Only Perriers. “Solitude” implies an introspection that Delon lacks, but then there’s that tricky “perhaps.” That ties into his relationship with his girl (Nathalie Delon), who seems to think he needs her. And it ties into his relationship with the pianist (Caty Rosier); we’re never sure of her motives. Even if the story seems extremely basic, and Delon seems like a rather paltry assassin—from what we see of his methods, he should’ve been behind bars a long time ago—Melville doesn’t give us quite enough to know what’s going on, and that adds to the tension. Rosier gives him a look, a slight variant of her polite, professional-musician smile; is she an accomplice? Their relationship is ambiguous in a way that Delon’s personality is not. He’s impenetrable because he’s a genre construct, an existential given—and nobody underplays as stylishly as Delon. The mystery of his origins seems artificial, and that’s why the film never transcends its genre, as Army of Shadows and The Godfather do. But, as a thriller—as a commercial film rather than a work of art—it’s top notch, on par with something like the American Kiss of Death. It’s a French French Connection, with all the scrappy vigor of the New Wave. Delon may not be a samurai, but Melville cuts like one; like the swordsman in The Seven Samurai, it’s hard not admire his graceful craft.