{"id":2478,"date":"2011-03-25T16:18:25","date_gmt":"2011-03-25T16:18:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/?p=2478"},"modified":"2011-03-25T16:18:25","modified_gmt":"2011-03-25T16:18:25","slug":"le-doulos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/reviews\/le-doulos\/","title":{"rendered":"Le doulos"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Aka Lo spione
\n1962
\nOriginal running length: 108 mins
\nFrance \/ Italy
\nBased on the story by Pierre Lesou
\nProduced by Carlo Ponti and Georges De Beauregard for Rome-Paris-Films and C.C. Champion
\nDistributed by Interfilm
\nDirector: Jean-Pierre\u00a0 Melville
\nScreenplay: Jean-Pierre\u00a0 Melville
\nCinematography: Nicolas\u00a0 Hayer
\nMusic: Paul\u00a0 Misraki
\nEditor: Monique\u00a0 Bonnot
\nArt director: Daniel\u00a0 Gu\u00e9ret
\nCast: Jean-Paul\u00a0 Belmondo (Silien), Serge\u00a0 Reggiani (Maurice Faugel), Jean\u00a0 Desailly (Commissioner Clain), Ren\u00e9\u00a0 Lef\u00e8vre (Gilbert Varnove), Marcel\u00a0 Cuvelier (An inspector), Aime’\u00a0 De March (Jean), Fabienne\u00a0 Dali (Fabienne), Monique\u00a0 Hennessy (Th\u00e9r\u00e8se), Carl\u00a0 Studer (Kern), Paulette\u00a0 Breil (Anita), Jacques\u00a0 De Leon (Armand), Philippe\u00a0 Mahon (Remy), Michel\u00a0 Piccoli (Nuttheccio), Christian\u00a0 Lude (the doctor), Daniel\u00a0 Crohem (Inspector Salignari), Jack\u00a0 Lonard (the second inspector), Charles\u00a0 Bouillaud (a barman), Charles\u00a0 Bayard (old guard), Andr\u00e9s (hotel manager)<\/p>\n

Le doulos <\/strong>was one of numerous primarily French films made with a small amount of Italian input.\u00a0 In this case, the producer was Carlo Ponti, who\u2019d already worked with director Jean-Pierre Melville on the war film L\u00e9on Morin, Pr\u00eatre (61), and Melville would also have another part in the Claude Chabrol film Landru the following year.\u00a0 The late fifties and sixties, in particular, was a period marked by a suffusion of international co-productions, with a mish-mash of French, Italian, Spanish and German companies all investing in each others films.\u00a0 A lot of the time, this had two purposes: as well as boosting the budget by having foreign money involved, most countries had some kind of complex tax rebate scheme in operation, and a film produced in more than one country would be able to access international funds, rebates and distribution channels that would otherwise be unavailable. Almost all of Melville\u2019s films, for instance, were Franco-Italian productions despite being – to all intents and purposes – almost entirely French.\u00a0 Similarly, most of Francesco Rosi\u2019s films were Italo-French productions, even though hardly any of them had any active French involvement.<\/p>\n

\"Le<\/a>
Le doulos<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Based on a novel by Pierre Lesou, whose work would also be adapted in other Franco-Italian films like Yves Boisset\u2019s Blood on my Hands <\/strong>(70) and Bruno Gantiollon\u2019s Without Warning <\/strong>(73), the plot follows Maurice Faugel (Serge Reggiani), just out of prison and all out of money. \u00a0Partly out of revenge for a betrayed and murdered colleague, partly motivated by greed, he murders a fence and steals a stash of jewels from him, burying them in a safe place until the heat has died down.\u00a0 In the meantime, he’s also planning an apparently simple robbery: breaking into a plush mansion, opening the safe and making off with all its contents.\u00a0 Along for the ride is his safe-cracker partner, Remy (Philippe Nahon), working with equipment supplied by an old friend of theirs called Silien (Jean Paul Belmondo).\u00a0 Silien, though, is an informant, and tips the cops off about their plan, as a result of which both Remy and Silien’s police contact are killed.<\/p>\n

Maurice, understandably, is mad about all this, and determines to have his revenge, especially when he finds out that his girlfriend has been murdered while the misfiring burglary was taking place.\u00a0 Silien, meanwhile, is having pressure put on him by the wily Commissioner Clain (Jean Desailly) to help apprehend Remy’s unknown accomplice and, in order to get the cops off his back, comes up with a scheme to frame a rival gangster, Nuttheccio (Michel Piccoli) for both of Maurice’s crimes.<\/p>\n

This is a macho, cool film, drenched in the smoke of Gaulois cigarettes, shot in the light of headlights piercing through the foggy night and populated characters speeding rapidly down the road to nowhere and doing absolutely nothing to make their situations any better.\u00a0 Almost nobody is as they initially seem, just about everyone is running some kind of duplicitous scam \u2013 even if they\u2019re doing it out of admirable motivations \u2013 and it\u2019s hard to think of any of them as being particularly heroic.\u00a0 It\u2019s about as hardboiled a crime film can be, the black and white cinematography of the underrated Nicolas Hayer is exquisite and Melville, who is now acknowledged as one of the authentic masters of this kind of thing, directs it all with the expected panache.<\/p>\n

\"Fabienne<\/a>
Fabienne Dali and Jean-Paul Belmondo in Le doulos<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It\u2019s interesting comparing this, as a French noir, to the Italian equivalents of, say, Franco Prosperi and Fernando Di Leo.\u00a0 All three directors were highly influenced by the American noirs, but Melville also seems more intent on recapturing some of their look and style as well; his films have an almost expressionist feel, which isn\u2019t surprising considering that a not insignificant number of the noirs had been directed by ex-pat Austrians and Germans like Fritz Lang and Otto Preminger.\u00a0 Prosperi and Di Leo, on the other hand, pack their films with more action and pace, whereas Melville seems more than happy to let his films <\/strong>play out in a slow-moving, moody fashion, the Italian directors were more intent on keeping the audience involved by throwing in a cool stunt or gunfight.\u00a0 Plot wise, though, Le doulos <\/strong>is almost indistinguishable from Di Leo\u2019s Milano Calibro .9<\/strong>: both films feature a recently released ex-con who pulls some kind of scam on his underworld associates, is involved with a girlfriend who isn\u2019t quite what she seems and has an odd relationship with another, more confident and settled criminal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Le doulos was one of numerous primarily French films made with a small amount of Italian input. In this case, the producer was Carlo Ponti, who\u2019d already worked with director Jean-Pierre Melville on the war film L\u00e9on Morin, Pr\u00eatre <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8],"tags":[885,886,884],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2478"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2478"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2478\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2483,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2478\/revisions\/2483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}