Love Tarantino and John Woo: one of the best detective movies will stay with you forever!

Le Samouraï, released in theaters on October 25, 1967, celebrated its era and became a cult film over time. Incandescent Alain Delon’s work was attracting 2 million viewers at the time.

Pushed by Pathé and Les Films du Camélia, Jean-Pierre Melville’s feature film will be released in a restored 4K version on June 28. The story follows Jeff Costello (Delon), aka Samurai, a contract killer. As he leaves the office where the body of Marte lies, his latest target, he meets the club’s pianist, Valerie.

Despite a good alibi, he is suspected of murder by the commissioner in charge of the investigation. When questioned by him, the pianist pretends not to recognize him. Freed, Jeff tries to understand why the young woman acted this way.

“Made in 1967, same year game time from Jacques Tatt and weekend from Jean-Luc GodardTwo films that are equally concerned with the question of modern alienation, Le Samouraï has become an emblematic film of Jean-Pierre Melville’s cinema for decades, but more broadly, an existential and iconic thriller with influences from the United States to Japan. will be important”Film historian Jean-Baptiste Torre analyzes.

Indeed, Le Samouraï is a reference for many filmmakers, including John Woo and Jim Jarmusch, whose respective films, The Killer and Ghost Dog, are more or less openly inspired.

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They are joined by Quentin Tarantino, Joel Cohen, Michael Mann or even Johnny To (who devotes a real cult to samurai). However, if they do not delay the motives of Melville’s film, they still resort to radically opposite principles of staging. The filmmaker’s style, on the other hand, is an ode to purity similar to Japanese prints.

“I don’t care about realism”Always with a hammer Jean-Pierre Melville. “All my films are based on fantasy. I’m not a documentary filmmaker: a film is primarily a dream, it would be absurd to try to reproduce reality… Samurai describes several parallel worlds that never meet, but occasionally clash with each other”He clarified, quoted Samurai in Paris, interview with Rui Nogueira.

For Jean-Baptiste Torre, Samurai “American film noir is given a treatment that, at the same time, provokes an approach Sergio Leone with classic Hollywood western mythology.”

I am not afraid of striving for purity

“But where is the director?” Once in the West Reviving the genre, then bloodless, with the hypertrophy of its codes (baroque style, heightened violence), Melville aims for a form of minimalist purity.The author explains.

For the latter, the sketch lends itself as much “On the American film noir (The Ritual of the Contracted Assassin, The Tragic Dimension of His Existence, Encounter with Death, Black Angel, played by Cathy Rozierrather than Japanese culture (the bogus Bushido quote that opens the film, Jeff Costello’s tireless masquerading).

Indeed, one of the important sentences of the film, which should belong to Bushido, is in the book of the samurai: “There is no deeper loneliness than the samurai”. In fact, it turns out that Melville himself invented it.

Allen, away!

Note that Jean-Pierre Melville worried about how he was going to film the scene where Jeff drives the stolen car to the auto parts garage.

But against all odds and without wasting a second, Alain Delon drove the car at full speed down the narrow road leading to the garage. All in one shot!

Moreover, when director Alain Delon brought a copy of the Samurai script, the actor wanted to know the title he had chosen.

When he found out about it, the director invited him to follow him to his room. Inside was a leather sofa and a samurai sword hung on the wall. Alain Delon already had the spirit of a samurai.

According to Jean-Baptiste Torre, Alain Delon plays one of the leading roles of his immense career in Le Samouraï. “This mysterious and almost mute killer is absolutely memorable, especially thanks to his minimalistic and precise style.” According to the film historian, Delon raised the genre film (thriller) to the level of ancient tragedy.

“With its valorization of details both sartorial (Jeff’s hat, a genre icon that transforms into a fetish) and pictorial, Le Samurai has become over the years a vast reservoir of motifs from which many filmmakers have drawn. Quentin Tarantino (Reservoir dogs) in order to John Woo (murderer), passerby Alain Cornot (Python 357 fonts), or Michael Mann (alone)”

Jean-Pierre Melville’s great classic is back on the big screen from June 28, in a restored 4K version.