Le Doulos (1963)

The Story

“One must choose. To die… or to lie.”

Melville’s rigorously directed and intricately plotted tale of self-defined morality in the criminal underworld focuses on a convict who seeks revenge for the murder of his girlfriend. This is the first of Melville’s explicitly modernist crime films in which the world created appears predetermined, patterned, curiously abstract, almost geometric. Serge Reggiani and Jean-Paul Belmondo perfectly ‘impersonate’ the Hollywood film noir anti-heroes so admired by the director since the early 1930s. Also features Michel Piccoli.

Synopsis by Adrian Danks.

Rating

CTC

Language

French (english subtitles)

Cast

Jean-Paul Belmondo, Serge Reggiani, Jean Desailly, René Lefèvre

Director

Jean-Pierre Melville