Gangster movie keeps you guessing
Published 4:34 pm Thursday, September 6, 2007
One of the great guessing-game movies, “Le Doulos” twists the world of the French gangster film into a very satisfying pretzel. This is one of those rare movies that keep its momentum going until the very last shot.
It’s a 1962 gem from director Jean-Pierre Melville, who’s become something of an industry lately for people who restore and distribute classic films. His sleek crime pictures “Bob le Flambeur” and “Le Cercle Rouge” have been rapturously received as re-issues, and last year the re-release of his French Resistance film “Army of Shadows” had some critics acclaiming it the beat movie of 2006 … even though it was made in 1969.
“Le Doulos” takes its title from a slang term for a police informer. That, we learn early in the film, describes a gangster named Silien (Jean-Paul Belmondo). But at first we’re following a mid-level mobster named Faugel (Serge Reggiani), as he kills another man and steals some jewels.
The surprises of the plot don’t need to be listed here, except to say that Silien and Faugel will cross paths many times in the course of the story. And that whatever puzzling things might happen along the way, all will be clear by the end.
This story is beautifully rendered in the film’s stylized black-and-white frames, which makes the Paris underworld into a collection of rat traps. The men wear trenchcoats and fedoras, and they all look like they’ve seen too many American movies or maybe just enough.
Melville was a filmmaker so fond of American culture that he took his name from a great American writer, and adopted the style of his movies from classic film noir. His crime films operate by a strict masculine code, which is at play in “Le Doulos” even when it doesn’t seem to be.
Two fine stars carry the load: Italian-born Serge Reggiani, who also became a popular singer of French songs, looks exactly like a wily, beaten-around hood, his instincts honed to a razor’s edge.
Belmondo, meanwhile, was near the beginning of his success (his role in Jean-Luc Godard’s revolutionary “Breathless” had come a couple of years earlier). Belmondo’s hangdog face and grinning style make a good counterpoint to the sometimes brutal things he does in this picture. His subsequent stardom is no puzzle.
