Doulos: The Finger Man [Region 2] | Jean-Paul Belmondo, Serge Reggiani

Doulos: The Finger Man [Region 2] | Jean-Paul Belmondo, Serge Reggiani | Melville on speed

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Doulos: The Finger...

	Doulos: The Finger Man [Region 2] Jean-Paul Belmondo, Serge Reggiani average customer review:based on 3 reviews view larger image
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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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Melville's Promise of Films Still to Come.

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

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Melville on speed

Le doulos = hat = police informant.

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.

Hopefully, there is or will be a Region 1 DVD available. If you have a multi-region DVD player, there's a Region 2 available at the Amazon.co.UK website (it ain't cheap).

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A Theft and Revenge Story

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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