40 years ago very young Belmondo plays the police informer Silien who is about to retire as a crook and gets involved in a fatal affair of friendship and betrayal. Everybody gets what he deserves, mostly a mortal bullet.
After successfully (brilliant but unrecallable scene on location in a Paris cafe) convincing the betrayed loser burglar Serge Reggiani that he did not betrayed him at all, Silien runs into a already prepared trap on the countryside. His trench coat catches a hole in the back and the last thing Silien thinks of is to cancel his last appointment with his girl friend.(Melville originally wanted another ending: Silien calling the police) Silien looks into the mirror of death, and soon doesn't see anything at all anymore. Silien need lie no longer. His expensive mansion equiped with the good and the bad taste of the late 50s becomes the mausoleum of the only clear thing in this almost last film of the serie noir: Finally everybody is dead. Who knows why ! There are not so many films of this make to come, only director J.P.Melville returned a few times to the subject: The story of a loner on his way down the drain.
Nicolas Hayer (Orphée) behind the camera looks at Paris in a very winterly mood, we meet a few extremely corrupt characters in the shadow at the edge of nowhere, underworld pure. (Melville even sends a car over the edge as a help for those who think they caught the meaning of that all.)The story may be logic as a critic points out, but definitely untellable. But who cares. So one better just watches some highly entertaining and spirited sequences in black and white at his best, f.i. at the police station. Whatever they are discussing, one is fascinated by the almost 10 minutes of uninterrupted film shooting, or the great lighting job at the end, when Silien drives in his American convertible (rain is falling in the studios Rue Jenner)and walks along the gray bushes toward his mansion where he finds the already deadly wounded Reggiani who warns him of the hired killer behind the paper wall. Showdown at Siliens villa.
Looking at the strange doing of Belmondo and Reggiani and Piccoli and
Jean Desailly and Fabienne Dali and Aime de March you soon lose the interest in understanding what is going on and why, you plainly watch strange actions in the very backyard of Paris and you feel a little sad they dont make films like that any more. And you also start feeling that you better like to meet Belmondo in life than a gangster looking like Belmondo.
Who would I have liked to stay alive ? Maybe Reggiani. He is the better or rather at that time more experienced actor (and the better singer his life long).) But in this film he shoots a friend,and walks away. I never found out, why he shoots him. Well, the characters in the film are all double, all false. This is probably why Melville starts the film with a line from Céline: 'One must choose...die...or lie.' (By the way Céline not Melville ads: 'Me I live'.)
Michael Zabel
After successfully (brilliant but unrecallable scene on location in a Paris cafe) convincing the betrayed loser burglar Serge Reggiani that he did not betrayed him at all, Silien runs into a already prepared trap on the countryside. His trench coat catches a hole in the back and the last thing Silien thinks of is to cancel his last appointment with his girl friend.(Melville originally wanted another ending: Silien calling the police) Silien looks into the mirror of death, and soon doesn't see anything at all anymore. Silien need lie no longer. His expensive mansion equiped with the good and the bad taste of the late 50s becomes the mausoleum of the only clear thing in this almost last film of the serie noir: Finally everybody is dead. Who knows why ! There are not so many films of this make to come, only director J.P.Melville returned a few times to the subject: The story of a loner on his way down the drain.
Nicolas Hayer (Orphée) behind the camera looks at Paris in a very winterly mood, we meet a few extremely corrupt characters in the shadow at the edge of nowhere, underworld pure. (Melville even sends a car over the edge as a help for those who think they caught the meaning of that all.)The story may be logic as a critic points out, but definitely untellable. But who cares. So one better just watches some highly entertaining and spirited sequences in black and white at his best, f.i. at the police station. Whatever they are discussing, one is fascinated by the almost 10 minutes of uninterrupted film shooting, or the great lighting job at the end, when Silien drives in his American convertible (rain is falling in the studios Rue Jenner)and walks along the gray bushes toward his mansion where he finds the already deadly wounded Reggiani who warns him of the hired killer behind the paper wall. Showdown at Siliens villa.
Looking at the strange doing of Belmondo and Reggiani and Piccoli and
Jean Desailly and Fabienne Dali and Aime de March you soon lose the interest in understanding what is going on and why, you plainly watch strange actions in the very backyard of Paris and you feel a little sad they dont make films like that any more. And you also start feeling that you better like to meet Belmondo in life than a gangster looking like Belmondo.
Who would I have liked to stay alive ? Maybe Reggiani. He is the better or rather at that time more experienced actor (and the better singer his life long).) But in this film he shoots a friend,and walks away. I never found out, why he shoots him. Well, the characters in the film are all double, all false. This is probably why Melville starts the film with a line from Céline: 'One must choose...die...or lie.' (By the way Céline not Melville ads: 'Me I live'.)
Michael Zabel