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Cozy Lummox

Le samourai

Jean-Pierre Melville

Special Features | Film Info | Cast & Credits | Essays

Synopsis

In a career-defining performance, Alain Delon plays a contract killer with samurai instincts. A razor-sharp cocktail of 1940s American gangster cinema and 1960s French pop culture--with a liberal dose of Japanese lone-warrior mythology--maverick director Jean-Pierre Melville's masterpiece Le Samouraï defines cool.

Special Features

  • - New, restored high-definition digital transfer
  • - New video interviews with Rui Nogueira, author of Melville on Melville, and Ginette Vincendeau, author of Jean-Pierre Melville: An American in Paris
  • - Archival interviews with Melville and actors Alain Delon, François Périer, Nathalie Delon, and Cathy Rosier
  • - Theatrical trailer
  • - New and improved English subtitle translation
  • - PLUS: a 29-page booklet featuring film scholar David Thomson, filmmaker John Woo, and selections from Melville on Melville

Film Info

1967
105 minutes
Color
1.85:1
Dolby Digital Mono 1.0
Anamorphic
French

Cast

Jef Costello Alain Delon
Superintendent Francois P�rier
Jane Lagrange Nathalie Delon
Val�rie, the pianist Cathy Rosier
Man in the passageway Jacques Leroy
Wiener Michel Boisrond
Bartender Robert Favart
Olivier Rey Jean-Pierre Posier
Hatcheck girl Catherine Jourdan
First inspector Roger Fradet
Second inspector Carlo Nell
Third inspector Robert Rondo
Mechanic Andre Salgues
Damolini Georges Casati
First nightclub client Jean Gold
Second nightclub client Georges Billy

Credits

Director Jean-Pierre Melville
Producers Raymond Borderie
Eug�ne L�picier
Screenplay Jean-Pierre Melville
Director of photography Henri Decae
Camera operators Jean Charvein (studio)
Henri Decae (exteriors)
Music Francois de Roubaix
Production design Fran�ois de Lamothe
Production supervisor Georges Casati
Assistant director Georges Pellegrin
Editors Monique Bonnot
Yo Maurette
Assistant editors Genevi�ve Adam
Madeleine Bagiau
Madeleine Gu�rin
Genevi�ve Letellier
Sound supervisor Alex Pront
Sound editor Robert Pouret
Sound engineer Ren� Longuet
Furniture and accessories Robert Christides

Essays

Death in White Gloves by David Thomson
Tone and style are everything with Le samouraï. Poised on the brink of absurdity, or a kind of attitudinizing male arrogance, Jean-Pierre Melville’s great film flirts with that macho extremism and slips over into dream and poetry just as we grow most alarmed. So the implacably grave coolness of Alain Delon’s >>>


Release Info

Catalog Number: SAM150
ISBN: 0-78003-018-4
UPC: 0-37429-20852-6


Related Topics

Noir & Neonoir
 
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