Nowadays, films that last more than two hours or even two and a half hours are no longer a rarity, on the contrary, they have become almost the norm. This was not the case in 1966, when Jean-Pierre Melville directed ‘Le Deuxième Souffle‘, a ‘film noir’ that assimilates and synthesizes the film experiments of the French New Wave, of which Melville was very close, but at the same time has a classic structure and narrative, starting from José Giovanni‘s documentary novel which it brings to screens (Giovanni also wrote the film’s dialogues). More than five decades after its making, the film has a stylish look (perhaps due to the use, for the last time in Melville‘s career of black and white film) but also a modernity and a cursivity that make it easy and interesting to watch. I didn’t get bored at any point and I never had feeling that the movie (which I saw in the full 150-minute version) is too long.
Jean-Pierre Melville addresses here a theme that he will continue in subsequent films and especially in ‘Le Samouraï‘, which I consider to be his cinematographic masterpiece – the theme of the honor code of the mob. Solidarity among those in the dark side of the law requires mutual protection among criminals, including rivals, in the contacts with the law officers and imposes absolute silence even under the toughest investigations. The informers and those who collaborate with the police are, according to this ‘moral’ code, the lowest human species, and the fate that awaits them is death. The film begins with the escape of Gustave ‘Gu’ Minda, the main hero of the film, played by the wonderful Lino Ventura, from the prison where he was serving a life sentence. When the police inspector who follows him uses an illegal recording to compromise him, the recovery of his honor becomes more than an obsession for him, more important than love and even life.
This is one of the solid and generous roles in Lino Ventura‘s career, a role that suits him wonderfully. A few other excellent actors surround him: Michel Constantin, known from many other gangster films, Paul Meurisse whom I knew from the classic ‘Diabolique‘ made a decade ago as a talkative and shrewd police inspector, and Christine Fabréga, whom I did not know until now, takes upon with aplomb the role of the hero’s hopeless girlfriend. The cinematography cleverly applies the lessons learned by Melville during his Nouvelle Vague period, bringing to screen Paris and Marseille with their shadows, bars and nightclubs, with jazz music in the background in the style of the American films adored by the young French directors of the period. The arid and spectacular landscape of the southern roads of France is an excellent setting for spectacular pursuits and heists, and we also have the opportunity to see the old port of Marseille as it looked before the renovations that turned it into a tourist destination. ‘Le Deuxième Souffle‘ is an excellent gangster movie, but also a psychological film, accurate and believable in character building, which deserves to be seen for much more reasons than nostalgia. But be careful to see the original 1966 version and not the 2007 remake, directed by Alain Corneau with Daniel Auteuil and Monica Bellucci in the lead roles, which is said to be (I did not see it yet) a less convincing film.