Review of Le Doulos (1962) by Daniel C — 24 Dec 2011

The title sequence of Le Doulos, like so much about his films, is just so brilliant your jaw drops open. And as with shots and the overall story and direction of his Le Samourai, he creates a style of direction, shooting and editing that creates a standard for what we see every day today.

You might say that the Doulos title sequence clearly influenced Scorsese and DePalma, and you would be right. One long shot powered with emotion and location, seemingly so little that tells you so much about one man.

But you might also say John Badham stole the Saturday Night Fever opening idea, or paid homage, and there you would be right as well. In high contrast black and white, the camera is on dolly tracks moving backward quickly through a car tunnel.

No cars. Light is dim, in spots there is no light at all. On a catwalk a man walks forcefully dressed in the Melville uniform: trench coat and hat. He is on screen left. The score is what was then called modern jazz, and the beats are timed perfectly to match the man's footsteps, which we hear (foleyed).

As the camera pulls back, at one point, stunningly for the early 1960s, the camera pans off to the right showing only the tunnel roof, then pans back. The screen goes black as the man walks through an area of darkness.

The title cards are running through this, including the explanation that a Doulos, literally a hat, in underworld slang means an informer, a snitch, but this isn't him. Finally he stops, the music resolves, and the man looks around, wary of what comes next, as well he should be.

He's going to make plans, but another man is going to inform on him, or maybe not really, because this is a very tangled web of intrigue, and the informer is Jean Paul Belmondo, the brilliant and drop dead handsome superstar of the French Next Wave.

The hoods all wear suits and the dames get smacked around. The cops are on the take. This is Paris. Melville was one of the greatest directors ever to work, and any great director will agree. Don't miss this, watch it over and over, see Le Samourai, and be amazed that so long ago when pretty much every movie made seems so dated today, that Melville saw a new way to tell a thriller, and it's going to make you want to hop a jet just to walk the streets where it was filmed.