Le Samouraï
Encyclopedia
Le Samouraï is a 1967
French
crime film
directed by French filmmaker Jean-Pierre Melville, starring Alain Delon
.
free-agent hitman
, Jef Costello (Delon), who religiously adheres to a strict code of duty. He lives in a spartan apartment whose interior contains a neatly arranged line of mineral water bottles, cigarettes on a bookcase, as well as a little bird in a grey cage in the middle of the room. He is taciturn and goes about his tasks like clockwork. The film opens with a fairly long take of the protagonist lying awake on his bed, smoking, when the following text appears on-screen, attributed to an ancient samurai
writing entitled Bushido
(Book of the Samurai) (but actually written by Melville):
Costello has no criminal record due to his methodical way of working, which includes constructing elaborate alibis with his girlfriend Jane (played by Delon's wife, Nathalie Delon
). He is hired to kill Martey, a nightclub owner. Despite his meticulous attention to detail, Costello leaves the scene of the crime with several people seeing him, including the club's beautiful piano player Valérie (Caty Rosier
). Although the police Superintendent (François Périer
) believes Costello is the killer, the evidence against him is insufficient. Costello soon finds himself in a difficult position, being pursued by both the police and his employers.
After being released from the police line-up, Costello loses a police tail and gets to a meeting point on a subway overpass. He walks up to a man who is one of his employers. Instead of paying Costello, the man shoots him in the arm and runs away. Costello returns home to take care of his wound before falling asleep. When he wakes up the same evening, he returns to the nightclub, prompting the barkeeper (Robert Favart) to confront him, saying, "If you were the man the police are looking for, one could say that the murderer always returns to the scene of the crime." Costello soon meets the piano player and they develop a slight relationship. In the meantime, men from the police department bug his room. During this scene a bird in a cage is agitated and flits about the cage due to the intrusion. Upon returning, Costello notices that the birdcage has loose feathers scattered around but the bird was serene with his presence. Suspecting that his room had been intruded, Costello searches his room for the bug, finds it, and turns it off.
In the meantime, police ransack Jane's apartment, turning her dressers inside-out, hoping to break her will and force her to testify. The superintendent tries to make a deal with Jane. He tells her that if she admits to have collaborated in fabricating Jef's alibi, she would have no more trouble with the police. Jane responds, "So you mean to say that if I perjure myself I will not find trouble with you? If I insist on telling the truth, then I can expect trouble. Am I right?" and shows the police officers the door.
Costello leaves his apartment to call Valérie from a phone booth, but she does not answer the phone. Back home Costello notices yet again that his bird behaves strangely. While trying to figure out what could be the problem he finds himself held at gunpoint by the man who shot him before. Only this time he gives him money and offers him a new job. Costello thinks it's a trap. He overpowers the man and ties him up, extracting information about the man's boss (the one who wanted to hire Costello for the new job) in the process. The boss is a man by the name of Olivier Rey (Jean-Pierre Posier).
Following a chase scene at the Métro, Costello soon realizes that he is in a position in which he cannot win. He visits Jane and tells her that he will take care of everything. After that he goes to Rey's home, which, as Costello finds out, is the same house in which the piano player lives. Costello shoots and kills Rey and goes to Martey's nightclub.
Whereas previously Costello had tried to be discreet and unseen by the nightclubbers, this time he comes in full view. He checks his hat, but does not take the ticket the young woman gives him. He walks over to the bar, where he puts on his white gloves, again in full view of everyone at the night club, especially the barkeeper. Costello walks toward Valérie, pulls his gun out and points it at her. She warns him not to stay, and after seeing the weapon, she simply asks "Why, Jef?" To which he replies, "I was paid to." After a moment of staring, the audience hears gunshots, but not from Jef's gun. Costello falls to the ground and dies. A junior police officer tells Valérie she is lucky they (the police) were there; otherwise, Costello would have killed her. The superintendent picks up Jef's gun and opens it for all (the police, Valérie, and the audience) to see. There were no bullets in the gun.
features a similar dynamic between a reluctant female witness and, this time, the getaway driver, not the assassin.
Hong Kong
director John Woo
's 1989 film, The Killer, was heavily influenced by Le Samouraïs plot, the bar's female pianist being replaced by a singer. Chow Yun-fat
's character Jeffrey Chow (international character name for Ah Jong) was obviously inspired by Alain Delon's Jef. The inspiration, or homage, is confirmed by the similarity in the character names. Woo acknowledged his influences by writing a short essay on Le Samouraï and Melville's techniques for the film's Criterion Collection DVD release.
Jim Jarmusch
paid homage to Le Samouraï with the 1999
crime-drama, Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai
, starring Forest Whitaker
as a meditative, loner assassin who lives by the bushido
code. In the same manner that Jef Costello has a huge ring of keys that enables him to steal any Citroën DS
, the hitman Ghost Dog has an electronic "key" to break into luxury cars.
Hong Kong director Pang Ho-Cheung's
2001
crime-and-filmmaking comedy You Shoot, I Shoot
features Eric Kot
as a hitman who idolizes Alain Delon's Jef, dressing like the character, and speaking to him via a Le Samouraï poster in his apartment.
Ranked #39 in Empire
magazines "The 100 Best Films Of World Cinema" in 2010.
Palmer, Tim. 2006. Le Samouraï In Phil Powrie (ed.), The Cinema of France. London: Wallflower Press. ISBN 1904764479 (hardbound), ISBN 1904764460 (paperbound)
Vincendeau, Ginette. 2003. Jean-Pierre Melville : 'an American in Paris. London: British Film Institute. ISBN 0851709508 (hardbound), ISBN 0851709494 (paperback)
1967 in film
The year 1967 in film involved some significant events. It is widely considered as one of the most ground-breaking years in film.-Events:* December 26 - The Beatles Magical Mystery Tour airs on British television....
French
Cinema of France
The Cinema of France comprises the art of film and creative movies made within the nation of France or by French filmmakers abroad.France is the birthplace of cinema and was responsible for many of its early significant contributions. Several important cinematic movements, including the Nouvelle...
crime film
Crime film
Crime films are films which focus on the lives of criminals. The stylistic approach to a crime film varies from realistic portrayals of real-life criminal figures, to the far-fetched evil doings of imaginary arch-villains. Criminal acts are almost always glorified in these movies.- Plays and films...
directed by French filmmaker Jean-Pierre Melville, starring Alain Delon
Alain Delon
Alain Fabien Maurice Marcel Delon is a French actor. He rose quickly to stardom, and by the age of 23 was already being compared to French actors such as Gérard Philipe and Jean Marais, as well as American actor James Dean. He was even called the male Brigitte Bardot...
.
Plot
The story follows a perfectionistPerfectionism (psychology)
Perfectionism, in psychology, is a belief that a state of completeness and flawlessness can and should be attained. In its pathological form, perfectionism is a belief that work or output that is anything less than perfect is unacceptable...
free-agent hitman
Hitman
A hitman is a person hired to kill another person.- Hitmen in organized crime :Hitmen are largely linked to the world of organized crime. Hitmen are hired people who kill people for money. Notable examples include Murder, Inc., Mafia hitmen and Richard Kuklinski.- Other cases involving hitmen...
, Jef Costello (Delon), who religiously adheres to a strict code of duty. He lives in a spartan apartment whose interior contains a neatly arranged line of mineral water bottles, cigarettes on a bookcase, as well as a little bird in a grey cage in the middle of the room. He is taciturn and goes about his tasks like clockwork. The film opens with a fairly long take of the protagonist lying awake on his bed, smoking, when the following text appears on-screen, attributed to an ancient samurai
Samurai
is the term for the military nobility of pre-industrial Japan. According to translator William Scott Wilson: "In Chinese, the character 侍 was originally a verb meaning to wait upon or accompany a person in the upper ranks of society, and this is also true of the original term in Japanese, saburau...
writing entitled Bushido
Bushido
, meaning "Way of the Warrior-Knight", is a Japanese word which is used to describe a uniquely Japanese code of conduct and a way of the samurai life, loosely analogous to the concept of chivalry. It originates from the samurai moral code and stresses frugality, loyalty, martial arts mastery, and...
(Book of the Samurai) (but actually written by Melville):
- There is no greater solitude than that of the samurai unless it is that of the tiger in the jungle... Perhaps...
Costello has no criminal record due to his methodical way of working, which includes constructing elaborate alibis with his girlfriend Jane (played by Delon's wife, Nathalie Delon
Nathalie Delon
Nathalie Delon, is a French actress, former wife of Alain Delon and mother of Anthony Delon.-Filmography:-External links:...
). He is hired to kill Martey, a nightclub owner. Despite his meticulous attention to detail, Costello leaves the scene of the crime with several people seeing him, including the club's beautiful piano player Valérie (Caty Rosier
Caty Rosier
Cathy Rosier was a model and actress, who was born in Martinique, French West Indies, and died in Marrakech, Morocco, from a ruptured aorta....
). Although the police Superintendent (François Périer
François Périer
François Périer, , born François Pillu in Paris, was one of France's most distinguished actors.He made over 110 film and TV appearances between 1938 and 1996. He was also prominent in the theatre. Among his most notable parts was that of Hugo in the first production of Jean-Paul Sartre's Les Mains...
) believes Costello is the killer, the evidence against him is insufficient. Costello soon finds himself in a difficult position, being pursued by both the police and his employers.
After being released from the police line-up, Costello loses a police tail and gets to a meeting point on a subway overpass. He walks up to a man who is one of his employers. Instead of paying Costello, the man shoots him in the arm and runs away. Costello returns home to take care of his wound before falling asleep. When he wakes up the same evening, he returns to the nightclub, prompting the barkeeper (Robert Favart) to confront him, saying, "If you were the man the police are looking for, one could say that the murderer always returns to the scene of the crime." Costello soon meets the piano player and they develop a slight relationship. In the meantime, men from the police department bug his room. During this scene a bird in a cage is agitated and flits about the cage due to the intrusion. Upon returning, Costello notices that the birdcage has loose feathers scattered around but the bird was serene with his presence. Suspecting that his room had been intruded, Costello searches his room for the bug, finds it, and turns it off.
In the meantime, police ransack Jane's apartment, turning her dressers inside-out, hoping to break her will and force her to testify. The superintendent tries to make a deal with Jane. He tells her that if she admits to have collaborated in fabricating Jef's alibi, she would have no more trouble with the police. Jane responds, "So you mean to say that if I perjure myself I will not find trouble with you? If I insist on telling the truth, then I can expect trouble. Am I right?" and shows the police officers the door.
Costello leaves his apartment to call Valérie from a phone booth, but she does not answer the phone. Back home Costello notices yet again that his bird behaves strangely. While trying to figure out what could be the problem he finds himself held at gunpoint by the man who shot him before. Only this time he gives him money and offers him a new job. Costello thinks it's a trap. He overpowers the man and ties him up, extracting information about the man's boss (the one who wanted to hire Costello for the new job) in the process. The boss is a man by the name of Olivier Rey (Jean-Pierre Posier).
Following a chase scene at the Métro, Costello soon realizes that he is in a position in which he cannot win. He visits Jane and tells her that he will take care of everything. After that he goes to Rey's home, which, as Costello finds out, is the same house in which the piano player lives. Costello shoots and kills Rey and goes to Martey's nightclub.
Whereas previously Costello had tried to be discreet and unseen by the nightclubbers, this time he comes in full view. He checks his hat, but does not take the ticket the young woman gives him. He walks over to the bar, where he puts on his white gloves, again in full view of everyone at the night club, especially the barkeeper. Costello walks toward Valérie, pulls his gun out and points it at her. She warns him not to stay, and after seeing the weapon, she simply asks "Why, Jef?" To which he replies, "I was paid to." After a moment of staring, the audience hears gunshots, but not from Jef's gun. Costello falls to the ground and dies. A junior police officer tells Valérie she is lucky they (the police) were there; otherwise, Costello would have killed her. The superintendent picks up Jef's gun and opens it for all (the police, Valérie, and the audience) to see. There were no bullets in the gun.
Alternative ending
In an interview with Rui Nogueira, Melville indicated that he had shot an alternate version of Jef's death scene. In the alternative ending, which is actually the original version as Melville had written in the script, Costello meets his death with a picture-perfect grin à la Delon. The scene was changed to its current form when Melville angrily discovered that Delon had already used a smiling death scene in another of his films. Still images of the smiling death exist.Influence
Walter Hill's 1978 film The DriverThe Driver
The Driver is a 1978 crime film directed by Walter Hill and starring Ryan O'Neal, Bruce Dern, and Isabelle Adjani. Based upon similarities in plot elements, it is heavily influenced by Jean-Pierre Melville's film Le Samouraï...
features a similar dynamic between a reluctant female witness and, this time, the getaway driver, not the assassin.
Hong Kong
Hong Kong
Hong Kong is one of two Special Administrative Regions of the People's Republic of China , the other being Macau. A city-state situated on China's south coast and enclosed by the Pearl River Delta and South China Sea, it is renowned for its expansive skyline and deep natural harbour...
director John Woo
John Woo
John Woo Yu-Sen SBS is a Hong Kong-based film director and producer. Recognized for his stylised films of highly choreographed action sequences, Mexican standoffs, and use of slow-motion, Woo has directed several notable Hong Kong action films, among them, A Better Tomorrow, The Killer, Hard...
's 1989 film, The Killer, was heavily influenced by Le Samouraïs plot, the bar's female pianist being replaced by a singer. Chow Yun-fat
Chow Yun-Fat
Chow Yun-fat, SBS is an actor from Hong Kong. He is best known in Asia for his collaboration with filmmaker John Woo in heroic bloodshed genre films A Better Tomorrow, The Killer, and Hard Boiled; and to the West for his role as Li Mu-bai in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon...
's character Jeffrey Chow (international character name for Ah Jong) was obviously inspired by Alain Delon's Jef. The inspiration, or homage, is confirmed by the similarity in the character names. Woo acknowledged his influences by writing a short essay on Le Samouraï and Melville's techniques for the film's Criterion Collection DVD release.
Jim Jarmusch
Jim Jarmusch
James R. "Jim" Jarmusch is an American independent film director, screenwriter, actor, producer, editor and composer. Jarmusch has been a major proponent of independent cinema, particularly during the 1980s and 1990s.-Early life:...
paid homage to Le Samouraï with the 1999
1999 in film
The year 1999 in film involved several noteworthy events and has been called "The Year That Changed Movies". Several significant feature films, including Stanley Kubrick's final film Eyes Wide Shut, Pedro Almodóvar's first Oscar-winning film All About My Mother, science fiction The Matrix, Deep...
crime-drama, Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai
Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai
Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai is a 1999 American crime action film written and directed by Jim Jarmusch. Forest Whitaker stars as the title character, the mysterious "Ghost Dog", a hitman in the employ of the Mafia, who follows the ancient code of the samurai as outlined in the book of Yamamoto...
, starring Forest Whitaker
Forest Whitaker
Forest Steven Whitaker is an American actor, producer, and director. He has earned a reputation for intensive character study work for films such as Bird and Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai, and for his recurring role as ex-LAPD Lieutenant Jon Kavanaugh on the gritty, award-winning television...
as a meditative, loner assassin who lives by the bushido
Bushido
, meaning "Way of the Warrior-Knight", is a Japanese word which is used to describe a uniquely Japanese code of conduct and a way of the samurai life, loosely analogous to the concept of chivalry. It originates from the samurai moral code and stresses frugality, loyalty, martial arts mastery, and...
code. In the same manner that Jef Costello has a huge ring of keys that enables him to steal any Citroën DS
Citroën DS
The Citroën DS is an executive car produced by the French manufacturer Citroën between 1955 and 1975. Styled by Italian sculptor and industrial designer Flaminio Bertoni and the French aeronautical engineer André Lefèbvre, the DS was known for its aerodynamic futuristic body design and innovative...
, the hitman Ghost Dog has an electronic "key" to break into luxury cars.
Hong Kong director Pang Ho-Cheung's
Pang Ho-Cheung
Edmond Pang Ho-Cheung is a Hong Kong novelist, playwright, actor and filmmaker.-Biography:Pang was born in Hong Kong in 1973. At the age of 15, he started using a video camera to direct short films with his elder brother....
2001
2001 in film
The year 2001 in film involved some significant events, including the first of the Harry Potter series and also the first of The Lord of the Rings trilogy...
crime-and-filmmaking comedy You Shoot, I Shoot
You Shoot, I Shoot
You Shoot, I Shoot is a 2001 Hong Kong film directed by Pang Ho-Cheung.-Plot:Bart , a professional contract killer, is requested by his clients to film his killings...
features Eric Kot
Eric Kot
Eric Kot Man Fai is a Hong Kong celebrity in the Chinese hip hop industry. As a popular MC/pop singer/actor who studied in California and is the youngest of three brothers...
as a hitman who idolizes Alain Delon's Jef, dressing like the character, and speaking to him via a Le Samouraï poster in his apartment.
Ranked #39 in Empire
Empire (magazine)
Empire is a British film magazine published monthly by Bauer Consumer Media. From the first issue in July 1989, the magazine was edited by Barry McIlheney and published by Emap. Bauer purchased Emap Consumer Media in early 2008...
magazines "The 100 Best Films Of World Cinema" in 2010.
Further reading
- Nogueira, Rui (ed.). 1971.
External links
- Le Samouraï at Rotten TomatoesRotten TomatoesRotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...
- Criterion Collection essay by David Thomson