LGM Film Club, Part 498: Le Deuxieme Souffle

Is there a greater French director than Jean-Pierre Melville? There’s a lot of great French film directors, no question. But for my money, only Agnes Varda and Eric Rohmer mean more to me than Melville. I’ve covered a couple of films before his this series–the excellent Bob Le Flambeur and of course Army of Shadows. I’d seen Le Deuxieme Souffle before but it had been years. So I tossed it on the other night. I realize I had forgotten quite a bit of it, but my god, what a great crime film. The plot is pretty standard. The always great Lino Ventura stars as Gu, a gangster and murderer escaped from prison. Paul Meurisse and his extremely expressive face star as the police detective Blot who is going to capture him if he can. Gu wants to get out of France, but he needs money and the typical things happen, blah blah. The point here is not really the standard plot, but all the detail and the character development.

I think part of the reason I like this and Melville generally so much is that he avoided any association with the French New Wave of Godard or Truffaut. This is a crime film like they would direct, but it’s so unstylized, so uncool, so unglamorous. There aren’t cool kids and hip women who want to be gangsters. Nope, this is the real thing and as bleak as you can imagine. It’s a full borne drama though that also avoids the stylized weaknesses that can engender. It’s just a film about a guy who knows he is going to die, but really doesn’t care very much. He doesn’t have existential crises. He doesn’t want something he doesn’t have. He just likes killing.

I’m going to try and get back to these Film Club posts more frequently. Lord knows I’ve seen enough movies, not to mention whatever I dig up on YouTube.

Here’s a 5 minute clip, introducing Blot.