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Le Doulos - Criterion Collection


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    Studio: Image Entertainment Release Date: 10/07/2008

    Though he had forced his way into French film culture by working entirely outside his country's studio system in the 1940s and 1950s, by the 1960s director Jean-Pierre Melville was working with larger budgets and well-known actors such as Jean-Paul Belmondo, star of Le Doulos. An extension of Melville's fascination with the existential milieu of American gangster films, Le Doulos presents New Wave icon Belmondo as Silien, a man newly released from prison and by reputation a professional informer. A figure, then, of possible duplicity and ambiguity, Silien is the perfect Melvillian hero, difficult to read but propelled by internal forces manifested as direct action. Maintaining friendships with both cop and crook, Silien's notoriety as a "finger man" who informs on the latter is underscored when one acquaintance, a police inspector (Daniel Crohem), waits in ambush for another, a burglar (Serge Reggiani), to perform his next job. But did Silien actually rat out the fellow? Melville pushes the envelope of our perceptions by making it appear Silien did, and then goes through the tale again to reveal another story. A much darker film than his celebrated Bob le Flambeur, Le Doulos is an absorbing tale of a world that seems to exist between light and shadow. --Tom Keogh


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    An early Melville film2008-12-063 / 5
    This review is for the Criterion Collection DVD edition of the film.

    Le Doulos is an early film by Jean Pierre Melville. It follows two criminals and their actions. One is thought to be police informant too, hence the title, which in French means "informant" and its English title, The Finger Man.

    The DVD contains the theatrical trailer, new interviews with German director, Volker Schlöndorff and Bertrand Tavernier who worked on the film, archival interviews with Melville and actors Jean-Paul Belmondo and Serge Reggiani, and partial length audio commentary by Melville biographer, Ginette Vincendeau.
    I'm hard on movies2008-11-245 / 5
    Excellent movie, unpredictable plot, nice twists and turns, but the final results end up feeling a tad contrived - if it weren't for this last item, I'd give this a 5-star rating. The extras include runnin commentaries for 3 of the scenes, rather than for the whole movie, but the other extras give us insights into the director's complex character. The interview comments with Serge Reggiani are unconvincing, but this makes them even more interesting, causing us to speculate on what he really thought about working under Melville.
    In summation, I can highly recommend this film.
    Betrayal and double crosses, style and irony, with some cool-looking trench coats 2008-10-254 / 5
    To dramatize gangsters because of some fictitious "code"...to romanticize them by dressing them in trench coats with the collars pulled up and Borsalinos on their heads...is not just naive, it's downright silly. One wonders what Melville, with Cagney and Raft in his system, would have done with some modern thugs like Vincent "Vinny Gorgeous" Basciano, Peter "Rabbit" Calabrese or Jake "Greasy Thumb" Guzik. These hefty slobs would look ludicrous in fedoras, and their "code" included back shooting each other.

    Melville's fascination with idealized and rigidly unreachable gangsters comes across almost as weird as Hitchcock's fascination with blond ice queens who can be humiliated. We're talking fetish, and if Melville and Hitchcock weren't such masterful moviemakers they'd probably be discussed in psychology textbooks and not in articles by film historians. But Melville and Hitchcock are masterful directors, and even their failures are interesting. Melville's Le Doulos is by no means a failure. It's a story of betrayal and double crosses and then more double crosses, some real, and some by tough men who make wrong assumptions. There's a sizable body count among those who wear trench coats and Borsalinos. The movie has that gritty, depressing, shadowed look of great noirs. If you're into masterful craftsmanship, Le Doulos is hard to beat.

    Le Doulos tells us about Maurice Faugel (Serge Reggiani), a tired gangster just out of prison who knows someone informed on him. He kills the man, but did he get the right man? He plans a burglary, using his girl to check the place out and a friend, Silien (Jean-Paul Belmondo), to loan him the safe-cracking equipment. Bad luck again; the cops show up, one gets killed and Faugel gets a bullet in his shoulder. This time we think we know who the stoolie is. We'd be foolish to place a bet on it. Or would we? Now the story becomes as much about Silien as Faugel. Belmondo's Silien may be an oily charmer, but Belmondo gives him dangerous shock value as well as star charisma. His questioning of Therese, Faugel's girl friend, is startling

    I don't buy the theory that a storyline that appears confusing is probably a great director's way of either playing with the audience or having an approach that is just too subtle for most of us to grasp. My theory is that, more often than not, the director simply lost control of the material, or ran out of production and editing time, or possibly just got a little bored with the project. I have no idea which was the reason with Le Doulos, but the storyline, already intricate with double crosses, leaves a lot for last minute tidying up. Silien's recapitulation of events, shown in flashback, doesn't help much. I started to think I must be in an English drawing room listening to Hercule Poirot explain how it all happened. Except...did I miss something at the end? No, but you sure better have an excellent memory for characters seen once, almost instantly. When you see finally what the last twist is, it seemed to me to be a case of heavy-handed theatrical irony.

    The movie is a great technical experience to watch. It's a fine example of Melville's technical mastery of his craft and his fascination with film gangsters and the self-imagined world he places them in. The story? For me, not all that involving; it's the storytelling that's the pay off.

    Melville's reputation, in my view, rests firmly on Army of Shadows - Criterion Collection, Bob le Flambeur - Criterion Collection and, to a lesser extent, Le Cercle Rouge (The Red Circle) - Criterion Collection. The more he veered into gangster style at the expense of the story, the more he veered into the world of film dilettantes and of professors of film studies. You know, the kind who love long tracking shots. Melville deserves better than what some of his professional enthusiasts lavish on him.

    The Criterion issue of Le Doulos has a fine black and white film transfer as well as several extras.
    Melville's Promise of Films Still to Come.2008-10-225 / 5
    Based on a novel by Pierre Lesou, Jean-Pierre Melville's French crime-thriller Le Doulos (The Finger Man) stars Jean-Paul Belmondo (Classe Tous Risques; Breathless) as Silien, a gangster recently released from prison and Maurice Faugel (Serge Reggiani), also an ex-con. As the film's title suggests, Silien may have informed on Faugel to the police following what should have been a simple heist. Through the characters of Maurice and Silien, Melville's film explores themes of friendship and loyalty between criminal anti-heroes, who live by a code of "Lie or die." In a film rich in trench coats, fedoras, shadowy alleys and jazz, Melville combines elements of film noir and gangster crime films with French new wave techniques. The eight-minute interrogation scene, filmed in a single shot, is reason enough to experience Le Doulos.

    Chronologically, while the film precedes Melville's masterpieces of the genre, Le Samourai (1967) and Le Cercle Rouge (1970), it foreshadows those later films. The newly restored Criterion edition of Le Doulos includes a high-definition digital transfer; selected-scene audio commentary by film scholar Ginette Vincendeau, author of Jean-Pierre Melville: An American in Paris; video interviews with directors Volker Schlöndorff and Bertrand Tavernier, who served as assistant director and publicity agent, respectively, on the film; archival interviews with Melville and actors Jean-Paul Belmondo and Serge Reggiani; the original theatrical trailer; and a new essay by film critic Glenn Kenny. Highly recommended.

    G. Merritt
    A Theft and Revenge Story2008-10-073 / 5
    1949 La Silence de la Mer
    1950 Les Enfants Terribles (Criterion) *****
    1953 Quand tu liras cetta lettre
    1956 Bob le Flambeur (Criterion) *****
    1959 Deux Hommes dans Manhattan
    1961 Leon Morin
    1962 Le Doulos (Criterion) ***
    1963 Aime de Ferchaux
    1966 Le Deuxieme Souffle (Criterion) *****
    1967 Le Samourai (Criterion) *****
    1969 Army of Shadows (Criterion) *****
    1970 Le Cercle Rouge (Criterion) *****
    1972 Un Flic ****

    Jean-Pierre Melville has made some noir masterpieces. I would not call this a masterpiece (I've rated the Melville films that I have seen above, the ones without stars are ones I haven't yet seen) but Melville and film noir fans will find enough here (Melville's stoic tough guys in trenchcoats and hats, the self-conscious homages to the American cinema of the 1930's, and the cold as nails world view accented by a cool jazz score) to keep them glued to the screen for 1 hr and 49 minutes.

    The plot: Maurice Faugel (Serge Reggiani) is a thief whose fresh out of jail. One of the old gang, Gilbert Varnove, is helping Maurice out until he gets back on his feet, but Maurice doesn't know who he can trust anymore. He suspects that someone set him up years ago, and he suspects that that someone might just be Gilbert Varnove. Additionally, for some inexplicable reason, Maurice has befriended a new kid named Mr. Silien (a fresh faced Jean-Paul Belmondo). Though it is never explained where or how they met the two seem to have some unspoken bond that exists only in noirs and westerns between old outlaws and new. Since everyone knows that Silien has "friends" on both sides of the law, the old gang doesn't really trust the new guy and Maurice agrees to keep Silien out of the loop on the upcoming heist.

    When this latest job also goes bad and another of his friends ends up dead as a result, Maurice is hellbent on exacting revenge. But who finked? The evidence all seems to point to Silien but can Maurice be certain?

    To further complicate matters Maurice has a girlfriend named Therese and Silien has an old flame named Fabienne who is now attached to Cotton Club owner Nutthechio (Michel Piccoli). Nutthechio's resume of underworld projects includes a major heist of the Avenue Mozart jewels. The fence for this heist was none other than Gilbert Varnove.

    The cops know all of these career criminals by name and they know whose in which gang so when Gilbert Varnove ends up dead one night the cops know exactly who to talk to. Or so they think. They know Maurice had a motive, but so did Nutthechio. So which one did it? The cops decide that the evidence points to Maurice, but can they be certain they've got the right guy? While in custody Maurice plots his revenge but is he plotting to get the right guy?

    Its a tightly knit community but no one trusts anyone and the truth remains hidden from view (until the very end).

    Melville is known for his intricately shot heist scenes. The disappointment here is that the major heist happens offscreen and we only get to see a minor break-in. But other Melville pleasures are scattered troughout including several indoor shots of cramped hideouts and prison cells and several outdoor shots of both the seedy and the seemly side of Paris at night seen mainly from the windows of large American automobiles. Interestingly, Melville does not attempt to capture the Paris that Chabrol so memorably captured in Les Bonnes Femmes or that Malle captured in Elevator to the Gallows, rather he shoots the city as if it were just another backdrop for yet another New York noir. And since Melville loved New York (and shot two of his films there) and classic American film noir theres nothing too surprising about that.

    The crux of the plot, as always with Melville, involves underworld relationships and betrayals. The criminals may conspire together in order to pull off jobs but they also each exist alone in their own universe of one and this is really the most compelling thing about Melville's films, the way men read and misread each other's private codes. While watching a Melville film one knows that these are men of few words but one also recognizes that if they spoke up a little more they could maybe avoid some of the inevitable confusions that arise when communication is limited to a shrug or a nod.

    The real surprise here is the way Silien handles Therese when he needs to get information from her.

    The other surprise is the elegant locale of the ending.

    But the best sequence is not the interrogation sequence which is forgettable but the intricately manufactured crime scene.

    Ok, enough said about the plot.

    Should you see it? If you love Melville already, then by all means yes. But if you are new to Melville I would start with Le Samourai, Army of Shadows, Le Cercle Rouge, and Un Flic. And then go back and see the earlier films such as Bob le Flambeur and Le Doulos. Les Enfants Terribles is also great but just be informed that its not a noir but the story of two incestuous and art-obsessed teens.

    I am very much hoping Criterion continues to fill out its Melville catalog. Hopefully, Le Silence de la Mer is next on the list.

    DVD extras: Insightful interviews with Tavernier & Schlondorff who discuss Melville the man (irascible, bullying), his lifestyle (he was an insomniac who lived above his own private film studio), his taste in film (William Wyler, Robert Wise), films he quoted or borrowed from in Le Doulos (Crime Wave, Odds Against Tomorrow), his incompetence with actresses and female characters (according to Belmondo who argued with him over his choices for the female leads), his love of Manhattan and wish to make Paris look like Manhattan, the artificialty of his film noir universes, the claim made by Rivette and others that Melville's attempts to find tragedy in the life of French criminals ignores the fact that the French underworld collaborated with the French Gestapo.

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