Review of Le Doulos (1962) by Michael T — 02 Nov 2014

"Le Doulos" is a movie of style, not coherence, and that's what I like best about it. Jean-Pierre Melville, a director who has famously been referred to as an American in Paris, makes a 1950s film noir, sets it in France, and places the characters in 1962. But the film is so crisply cool and so conscientious of how it presents itself that it could be set in 1944, 1960, 1980, or 2025. It lives a timeless world where slippery bad guys in fedoras surround themselves with piling crimes and chic women. It's not based in realism, but in pulpy fantasy.

Before the film even begins, Melville presents us with an ultimatum in which neither option is pleasant: "One must choose: die ... or lie?" The characters in "Le Doulos" don't get to pick. Most get both. In film noir you are never really safe. You can parade around looking suave and slick, carry a gun with confidence, and take a bath in diamonds. But one false move, and you're dead.

The plot is thin but coats itself in chimerically shadowy cinematography and terrific performances. Maurice Faugel (Serge Reggiani) has just been released from a six-year prison sentence, and immediately commits another crime by double-crossing a fellow hoodlum, stealing scads of diamonds. Afterwards, Maurice begins to blueprint a risky jewel heist. He shares his plans with Silien (Jean-Paul Belmondo), who may or may not be a police informant.

Storywise, this is the basis of the entire film; what comes between is a labyrinth of Hollywood-based, glittering crime thriller stylings. "Le Doulos" explores the themes of brotherhood, loyalties, and instant betrayals that pitfall the crime underworld, and it fills itself with so many different characters and settings that the dialogue doesn't truly ever push the plot forward. The conversations seem straight out of a Humphrey Bogart film noir, neatly witty, perfectly placed, and hard-edged. If the characters aren't always fleshed out as people, they're better looked at as added character archetypes, textures, if you will.

Belmondo is the smooth talking gangster that may or may not be on your side; Reggiani, a Dana Andrews lookalike, is capable of violence, yet you can feel an underlying regret beneath his leather trench coat. Hennessy and Dali are the women, with Hennessy as the moll caught in the middle of some deadly action while Dali, with her winged eye-liner and jet-black hair, is a slinky B-Ava Gardner.

As its piano-driven, martini glass score plays in the background of the more mundane scenes, "Le Doulos" emanates an icy, inexplicably bad-ass attitude that even makes the clichéd "crime doesn't pay" message fresh again. The final shootout resembles Quentin Tarantino's "Reservoir Dogs" climax; Belmondo's performance is quintessential. Melville's homage to film noir feels less like an homage and more of a full-hearted exercise in style.