Customer Reviews

Le Doulos [VHS]

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Cool, collected and oh so sheik, `Le Doulos' reminds me a lot of Melville's later triumph `Le Samourai'. Both films are just dripping with attitude and suave entitlement and both films delve into the gritty life of a criminal. This time around, the trench coats and jazz music follow a group of thieves as they deal with a supposed informant. With enough twists and turns to keep you guessing till the very end, `Le Doulos' does everything it needs to in order to hook you and keep you hooked.

In `Le Doulos', Jean-Pierre Melville introduces us to Silien, a shady character of sorts who may or may not be a police informant ratting out his friend, the recently released Maurice Faugel. As Maurice finds his latest job botched at the hands of the police he begins to wonder just who his real friends are, and when he finds himself behind bars it seems all too obvious who is behind it all; but is it really all that simple?

No.

I raved `Le Samourai' and I will continue to do so. It is one of the greatest film noirs I've ever seen, and it continues to impress me every time I sit through it. `Le Doulos' is right up there for me; a sublime example of a director and a group of actors taking a mood and carrying it through to completion. Everything about this film is perfectly designed to embellish the mood Melville was attempting to convey. This film is dripping with style, yet it doesn't rest easy on that said style; it actually backs it up with substance. The plot is thick and intricate and the acting is superb. Jean-Paul Belmondo is stellar as Silien, possessing the same coolness that Alain Delon strutted around with in `Le Samourai'. He plays to his characters ambiguity very well, so well that his loyalty is always a question mark, which is essential to the films final reveal. Serge Reggiani is also very good here as Maurice, capturing his characters confusion as he begins doubting all he's grown accustomed to. Personally, I was floored with Monique Hennessy's small turn as Therese. She was astonishing and completely engrossing in just a few short scenes.

Those eyes melt me.

Undoubtedly the star of the show is director Jean-Pierre Melville who just dominates each frame with his personal style and technique. I remember very vividly the opening frames of `Le Samourai' and I think I even raved that opening sequence in my personal review (the lonely birdcage). Similarly, Melville uses a simple image (in this case, a man walking through dark alleys) to convey the films intended mood; dark and mysterious. That initial image stays with the viewer throughout the film and even past its conclusion (which is a BRILLIANT piece of work) and remains one of the most important and telling scenes in the film. A great film needs to have that fluidity, and it is established by the director understanding the message he is trying to convey and knowing how to create it in its entirety.

Jean-Pierre Melville is that kind of a director.

So, as you can tell, I truly loved this movie and I highly recommend it. The film noir is a tricky genre, because if not done right it can come off hokey or even campy. This is far from either of those two definitions. `Le Doulos' is sleek, cunning, mysterious and highly entertaining; everything you could ask for from a noir and much, much more.

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.

This is probably one of the lesser known (or watched) pieces from perfectionist film maker Jean-Pierre Melville, who is perhaps most known as the creator of Le Samurai and Un Flic, both starring Alain Delon. Le Doulos has Jean-Paul Belmondo, who presumably was one of the most famous French actors at the time. It should be added, however, that the others are no less impressing. The story line tends to be a bit complex every now and then, not the least because of the many characters figuring in it and their subtle and many-faced interrelations. So I hasten to say that this should be interpreted as a compliment rather than as a point of criticism. Le Doulos is a fascinating and absorbing movie experience from the first moment on. Definitely worth watching at least twice. As we expect from Criterion, the movie is delivered in excellent quality including a number of interesting extras such as archival interviews with the director and main star.

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.

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.

One of Melville classics. Arguably the best-shot film noir ever (perhaps in tie with "The Third Man" and "The Man Who Wasn't There") with high contrast B&W photography. In some scenes the shadows are so pronounced, if feels as though someone took liberties with the laws of optics.

A crime story populated with trench coat and fedora wearing men, as in all Melville gangster flicks.

Maurice Faugel (played by Serge Reggiani) gets out of jail after serving time for a heist but right away he commits a murder by shooting one of his old associates. The story then moves on to a big jewelry heist job during which Faugel shoots and kills a police detective. That's when the cops start to tighten the screws to find the killer.

The second important character in this film is Silien (played by Jean-Paul Belmondo), another criminal and our anti-hero protagonist who knows Faugel well. Throughout the film Faugel thinks Silien sold him out to the cops since Silien is known to be a police informant. We indeed see a several situations to suggest that possibility even though during his formal interrogation Silien frustrates the police by refusing to reveal nothing and denying any knowledge of the jewelry heist.

The knot of the puzzle unravels in the third act during a long expository scene at a restaurant where Silien spills out everything to Faugel who learns the real identity of his girlfriend and why she suffered an untimely death. However, while in police custody Faugel has already bought a contract on Silien's head and now he understands he has to stop the killer before it's too late.

But this is a film noir and of course it's too late! In a mesmerizing last sequence, all principals meet the same end that visited their victims earlier.

TRIVIA: The opening sequence where Faugel walks along a very long underpass is said to be one of the longest uninterrupted tracking shots in film history.

To read a more detailed analysis of this film, see 4 French Film Noir Classics.

This DVD has been around long enough to have garnered some highly intelligent reviews, most of them favourable. The only critical exercise left that may be of use to prospective purchasers is to review the film AND the reviews in parallel. It is necessary to point out that Melville came late to the gangster genre and had established his credentials as a master of the cinematic Art in such gems as Les Enfants Terribles, Le Silence de la Mer, and Leon Morin Pretre, without any need for louche persona dressed in trench-coats and Borsalinos. These are wonderfully poetic explorations of love in many different manifestations ------ sibling , cultural , and divine. In the later Army of Shadows, there is not much poetry, but there is an intense concern with fundamental issues of morality and justice in the context of a fight to the death. It is not too far-fetched to suggest that these issues also pervade his "gangster" films that, however entertaining, were not necessarily conceived as entertainment only, but also as morality tales. Failure to realize this will deprive the viewer of at least one dimension through which his work must be appreciated. Another concept with which I must take issue is that of Film Noir. It would be best if this term were abolished from the critical vocabulary of the cinema. Reading through any essay, book, or merely lists devoted to so-called Films Noirs reveals a mish-mash of titles where the works are more notable for their differences than their similarities. Even Harry Potter Films meet more than half the so-called criteria. Walt Disney and other cartoons are among the few that can be ruled out. But how about that early exotic Film Noir spy thriller: A Night in Casablanca? Let me just say that Le Doulos is perhaps the most complex, difficult, and rewarding film dealing with the life and loves of criminals that I have seen. I loved it the first time I saw it, but understood it fully only on the 3rd occasion. The plot is worked out with meticulous detail. It has dialogue in which every word counts; and the same economy of expression carries over to the talented band of actors who slaughter each other throughout its all too short duration. This is acting as virtuoso team-work. Unlike Bob Le Flambeur and Le Samourai, there is no single central character, but rather a continuum of individuals drawn from the lower depths whose fates are intertwined and of equal importance. And now to those reviewers who have done most of the hard work. Thank you Andrew Ellington, but I cannot agree that Le Samourai is a better film. Thank you Doug Anderson, but why only 3 stars? Your Melville ratings are intriguing, but I would downgrade Le Samourai to 4 stars ( cold, and the least humane of Melville's films), and of those that you have NOT seen, I rate Le Silence De La Mer 4 stars, and Leon Morin 6 stars if I had a way of doing so. A nice job, C.O. DeRiemer, but I hope that since Oct. 2008 you have seen the film sufficiently often to unravel the convoluted plot and glory in its convolutions. As all others have mentioned, this is a superb transfer from Criterion with extras that are really worth having.

"Le doulos" is one of the most emblematic exponents of the Noir film in the early sixties. The main difference between this approach and the rest, resides in the poignant anecdote. A confident -Sailier- works as intermediary between the cops and the gangsters in the underworld of Paris, truly believes in the power of the friendship, when Maurice a thief recently released from prison, decides to recover his four years in jail and to dispatch the master brain of an audacious heist in Av. Mozart.

But Maurice has planned since he was in prison a cold blood murder for this confident, because he is truly persuaded he was jailed due this confident. So, the fate has been sealed and when he realizes his fatal mistake, it will be too late to intend to change his initial will.

Betrayal, double crosses, honesty and surreptitious ambitions will be nestled under all those dark personages.

Jean Pierre Melville proved why he was a master director and mo other French director was capable to reach the enviable status he achieved.

A master film and one of my everlasting cult movies from the sixties. A true masterwork all the way through.

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.

Le doulos = hat (slang) = police informant (slang)

For Jean-Pierre Melville, this is a surprisingly fast-moving story based on the distrust between criminals, police and police informants. It turns into a fine whodunnit so it helps to keep you wits about you.

This is the second Jean-Paul Belmondo performance I've seen in a Melville films and they were both outstanding. He is more subdued in these films than is typical for Jean-Paul, yet he has more life and dimensions than Alain Delon who would become Melville's choice for later films. Lesser-known Serge Reggiani is equally splendid in the other major role of the film (he is the focus of the first half of the film).

This is a B&W film with 60s clothing styles for the women and 50s style for the men (trenchcoat and hats). Not as distinctive as the other films I've seen of Melville's, but, because of its storytelling and pacing, it's one I can recommend to people who wouldn't tolerate his slower-paced films. In other words, this one is just plain fun.

If you're lucky, your DVD will include commentary for selected scenes and an on-camera lecture by French film expert, Ginette Vincendeau. If so, it will likely include comments by Assistant Director to Melville, German-born Volker Schlondorff. Both are extremely fluent in English and offer fascinating information.

Yay! A Region 1 DVD (LE DOULOS - Criterion Collection) is available. It even includes a couple of these special features.