Le Samouraï

Man at work. This is what he does, how he makes his living. Step by step. Every movement recorded. Only the longer time lapses are handle with wipe transitions. Dark and light grey, black. Cold colours that elicit no emotion. That doesn’t belong in the world of the samurai. Like a machine. Repetition of gestures, learned actions, places to return to. The force of habit, if you like. He walks deliberately, purposefully, indifferent to his surroundings. He doesn’t make mistakes, and if he does, he knows the price that he will pay for it in this line of work. The work of the investigators is equally soul-crushing. It takes hours without yielding a satisfactory result. Melville is not interested in action. He distances himself for it just as much as the camera is distant from the confrontation on the bridge. He wants to capture and analyse what precedes the action and what follows it. Slowly and engagingly. Le Samouraï may be a genre film, but if you approach it as such, its meaning will most likely escape you and, at the same time, you will notice how in several respects it doesn’t make sense. For me, it’s one of the most imaginatively made movies about loneliness. 80% (10/09/2014)

A very peaceful film in the sense that there is basically no talking. But otherwise, there is quite a lot happening. Alain Delon is a silent killer who knows how to do his job. Instead of his words, his pet and his gun will scream into your ears. And all of this in a movie that is definitely not just about killing, but is delivered in a properly tough manner. (06/15/2015)

A movie that at the very beginning quotes a text from Bushido, that is called Samurai and on top of that it was made by the authors who gave birth to the legendary era of French crime movies makes me think about whether there is anything about it that could fail. And having seen it, I must say that there isn’t. The only thing is that I had a different idea of a loner than the one presented in this movie. (12/01/2015)

A unique film that blends austerity in style with a distinctive formal approach that results in something completely different than could be expected from a thriller about hit-men. It’s dominated by a melancholy, an atmosphere and an aloofness that Melville doesn’t break even in the dialogues limited solely to the most important phrases, which allows for the development of a simple story about revenge, but mainly about loneliness and suppressed emotions. The atmosphere and the captivating portrayal of the protagonist pin the viewer to the screen, so it’s a pity the narrative is set at one expression until the end, which is not very interesting when it comes to the staging, even though it stands out as an idea and as part of a thoughtful piece of work. 85% (10/26/2018)

In Melville’s masterpiece, the director perfectly combines his cinematic concepts. He never conceived his films as images of reality, but as dreams. It is thus all the more remarkable that at the time when most French productions were shot in studios, he shot his films on location. However, he characteristically sought out corners and spaces that matched his surreal and supremely aesthetic vision of genre worlds. Like its protagonist, his fateful and melancholically veiled ode to hired assassins becomes an ideal that fascinates with its outward detachment, refined style and purposeful craftsmanship. Though Le Samouraï contains minimal dialogue, it remains perfectly comprehensible and, mainly, astonishingly suspenseful, at it draws its eloquence both from the power of film language and from cinema as a body of work and genre foundations that are universally comprehensible to viewers. It is thus no wonder that Le Samouraï became another essential work of the genre, adoringly used as a reference work by later greats such as John Woo, Jim Jarmusch and Johnnie To in their own odes to movie killers. (07/08/2023)