Le doulos

Plot synopsis:
Maurice Faugel, just released from prison after serving a six-year sentence, meets a friend, Gilbert, who is appraising the value of jewels from a recent heist. Maurice is planning a robbery the next day with two accomplices, Silien and Rémy. Maurice kills Gilbert with Gilbert's own gun and steals the jewels as well as a large sum of money. It is later revealed that Gilbert killed Maurice's girlfriend Arlette to keep her from informing the police when Maurice was sent to prison six years prior. Maurice leaves the house just as Nuttheccio and Armand, prominent gangsters, arrive to collect the loot. Maurice buries the jewels, money, and gun under a lamppost.
Maurice spends the evening at his girlfriend Thérèse's apartment. Silien arrives the next day with Maurice's friend Jean to deliver equipment for the robbery that evening. When Silien leaves, he uses a payphone to call Inspector Salignari.
That evening, Maurice and Rémy leave to rob a home in affluent Neuilly. Meanwhile, Silien comes to Thérèse's apartment, then beats her and ties her to a wall radiator, demanding to know the address of the robbery. The police arrive at the robbery. Inspector Salignari corners Maurice and Rémy, fatally shooting Rémy. Maurice and Salignari shoot at one another; Maurice is hit in the shoulder, and Salignari is killed. Maurice leaves the gun in Rémy's hand and continues to run away. He passes out just before a car pulls up to the curb.
Maurice wakes up in Jean's apartment, but neither Maurice nor Jean's wife Anita know who brought him there. Maurice resolves to find Silien, who he believes informed the police. He leaves Anita with a diagram showing where he buried the jewels, money, and gun, telling her to give it to Jean if something happens to him.
Because the police know that Silien called Salignari, they assume he has information on the botched robbery. They question him, hoping to get the name of Rémy's accomplice, but Silien tells them he wasn't the informant. He mentions that he hopes to get out of the criminal underworld and live in a house he has built in Ponthierry. It is revealed that the car that rescued Maurice has been found wrecked, with Thérèse's body inside.
The police also suspect Maurice for the murder of Gilbert. They threaten to falsely implicate Silien in a drug case unless he helps them find Maurice. Silien complies and Maurice is found. Maurice claims that Gilbert was killed while Maurice was in another room of the house. The police offer to let him go if he has information on the robbery in Neuilly, but Maurice claims he has no information. He is jailed, where he meets a prisoner named Kern.
Silien finds the buried jewels, money, and gun beneath the lamppost. He visits Nuttheccio's club and speaks to Fabienne, a former girlfriend. He offers to get her out of her relationship with Nuttheccio if she will testify that Nuttheccio and Armand killed Gilbert. She agrees. Silien kills Nuttheccio and plants the jewels in his safe, while Fabienne calls Armand to tell him Nuttheccio has found the stolen jewels and wants to see him. When Armand arrives, Silien kills him, staging the scene to make it look like they killed one another.
With Nuttheccio and Armand dead and framed for Gilbert's murder, Maurice is released from prison. He still believes that Silien informed on him, so Jean and Silien reveal that Silien was not the informant and had in fact been maneuvering to get Maurice out of prison. Though Silien was a friend of Salignari, he did not inform him of the robbery. However, he recognized Thérèse as one of Salignari's informants. The night of the robbery, Silien called Salignari to invite him to dinner, and Salignari revealed that he would be arresting two burglars in Neuilly. Silien got the address from Thérèse and went to Neuilly to avert a disaster. He arrived in time to pick up Maurice and take him to Jean's apartment.
Silien announces that he will be moving in with Fabienne at his home in Ponthierry, and that he is going there now. However, while in prison, Maurice arranged for his cellmate Kern to kill Silien, promising the money he stole from Gilbert in exchange. Kern is waiting at Silien's home, and Maurice rushes there to tell him that the hit is off.
Maurice manages to arrive in Ponthierry before Silien but Kern shoots him, apparently mistaking him for Silien. When Silien arrives, he sees Maurice's body on the ground. With his dying breath, Maurice warns him that someone is waiting behind a partition. Silien shoots at the screen, killing Kern, but Silien is also fatally shot.

Tags: revenge, neo noir, murder, flashback

Review:
DOULOS: THE FINGER MAN (Jean-Pierre Melville - France/Italy 1962).Jean-Paul Belmondo is the duplicitous Silien, underworld criminal and police informer and Serge Reggianni as the dogged villain Faugel.
That's probably why Alain Delon became Melville's first choice in his later films, because Delon naturally had a much more restrained performance.Based on a novel from the famous série noire crime series, he made a film what he called 'my first real policier'.
By Melville standards, it still has quite a competent plot and does make sense but there's not really a central character like Bob in BOB LE FLAMBEUR or Jeff Costello in LE SAMOURAI to root for.Melville very much belonged to the Parisian post-war intelligentsia who were infatuated with American literature, music and above all, film.
They drive American cars (and the occasional cool Citroën), behave like gangsters in American crime films of the '40s and Melville loves to use newspaper headlines to heighten some of plot elements, just like Godard famously did in AU BOUT DE Soufflé.
("Doulos" means informer or Finger Man, which is the title in English.) Reggiani plays Maurice, who has just gotten out of prison and is getting involved with another robbery attempt.
The black and white photography by Nicholas Hayer - who also did Cocteau's Orphée and Clouzot's Le Corbeau - is superb, from the wonderfully atmospheric opening sequence (Melville may be THE master of opening sequences) to the stunning, Cocteau-like shot of a man staring into a mirror that closes the film.
Whatever his failings as a director, Melville definitely knew how to create a great atmosphere.Le Doulos is definitely worth checking out, especially by fans of film noir, Melville or Belmondo..
Jean-Pierre Melville's direction is a glorious tribute to classic American crime films of the 1940's and early 50's but has also a strong touch of originality.
It's a Hollywood film-noir underworld, where men constantly wear hats and trench coats like Humbrey Bogart, brandishing revolvers, drinking bourbon or scotch and driving big American cars, that look like tanks compared to small ordinary European vehicles around.
The overall mood is dark and threatening and with the right kind of lightning and photography many scenes seem like epitomes of the best stuff the genre has ever offered.Compared to its predecessors The Fingerman gives some new shine to the term 'hard boiled'.
Fate still has its usual final word, as anyone familiar with characteristics of the genre well knows.The plot with several flashbacks and changes of time and place may feel a little complex at the beginning, but opens up to be a very rewarding movie experience towards the end.
Gangster films rarely manage to surprise their audience with the plot (unless they sacrifice logic as so often in Raymond Chandler's stories), but here we have an exception.
This is not the case with Jean-Pierre Melville, whose Bob le Flambeur is a powerful tale of a compulsive gambler who attempts to right his own life and the lives of those he cares for.
In Le Doulos, the story focuses on a gangster, Maurice, just released from prison who immediately gets back on the other side of the law and begins to get involved in the ever-constant struggle between French police and organized crime.
This film obviously owes a great deal to early American gangster films, as so much of Melville does, but what makes it slightly different is the complexity of character and plot Melville injects into the story.
Yet, it is never too confusing and never dull to watch as Melville invites us to explore closer the beautiful fluid camera work and the stunning and stark cinematography.The acting is also quite effective, especially Serge Reggiani as the world-worn Maurice whose face says more than anything else, and French cinema legend Jean-Paul Belmondo as the too cool for his own good Silien.
But it is a kind of "lost" classic in some ways, harder to find than Jean-Pierre Melville's films on Criterion DVD (Le Cercle Rouge, Bob le Flabeur, and Le Samourai), but still as rich in his own style than with his other films.
But Melville still instills his distinctive flair at making old-fashioned crime stories involving criminals with codes of honor, police with some level of respect and intelligence, and a perfection of dead-pan dialog and silences.The film also includes a star of the times- Jean-Paul Belmondo plays Silien, a sort of smooth operator of underdog criminals, who is friends with Maurice Faugel (Serge Reggiani, a man with soul in his face if that makes sense).
Faugel, at the start of the film, does something that may or may not have been the right thing, but he still has to hide it, in the midst of gearing up for a heist (again, this IS Melville).
I hesitate to describe much else of the story; on a first viewing one may think there is too much exposition at times (in particular when Silien reveals some of the details later in the film to Faugel, with fades to flashbacks and so forth), and the double-crossings that occur make the story very twisty, in the perfunctory crime-novel sense of course.
In some ways it's a little more novelistic in the storytelling than a film like Le Cercle Rouge.The style of Le Doulos is a sumptuous feast for the eyes and senses.
Like all his other crime films, he's working in a framework akin to the American genre pictures of the late 30's and 40's- tough guys almost always shielding their emotions, kind to most women but not all (there's an interrogation scene by Silien with a woman that is effective, and rather disturbing in just the set-up of the woman), and a kind of fate that is and isn't expected with the characters.
One might even try and make naturalistic comparisons with the story; Faugel with his own problems, Silien with his lonely but loyal life to his few friends, the police's professionalism.But what really catches me with Le Doulos, like the best moments in Melville's films, is how he subverts the kind of expectations of the classic style of the 40's American crime films - dark shadows in the background coming into the foreground, creeping in on the characters, and usually basic camera moments - with the 'new-wave' sensibilities.
The Silien scene I mentioned is one, but also note the hand-held use as the robbers run away from the cops after the heist; the extraordinary long-take in the police investigation (you almost forget that there isn't a cut); the occasionally very unusual angles put onto characters to add a certain 'kick' to the feeling behind it.Despite the straightforward attitude of the characters, there is emotion behind the style.
But the coolness outranks everything else; Belmondo, by the way, is so cool in this film, so unflinchingly so at times (even if in sometimes a little ineffectual), it makes his performance in Breathless seem amateurish.
In films like Le Doulos(1961), things such as expressionism become an essential part of Melville's cannon of films.
In a way the Silen character played by the actor can be seen as Michel of Breathless(1960) if Michel had lived and became an informer.
The plot twists of Le Doulos(1961) are examples of what was one of many big trademarks in the French gangster picture.
In many of Melville's main characters from films such as Le Doulos(1961) and Le Samurai(1967) there is a narcissistic feeling that compensates for the emptyness that surrounds their inner body.
Jean Paul Belmondo exhibits his strength as an actor in playing the informer, Silen.
Serge Reggiani as Maurice Faugel plays his character with a dogged tiredness that is reminicent of Jean Servais's performance in Rififi(1955).
Le Doulos(1961) has many themes that Jean Pierre Melville return over and over again in his crime films.
Le Doulos's direction gets some terrific visual ques from Melville as well as a tight execution of plotting.
Jean Paul Belmondo was Jean Pierre Melville's second alter ego after Alain Delon which helped make them into a great actor-director combo.
Every character in the film is looking to double-cross someone, but in the end only the audience is successfully hoodwinked, fooled into attempting to unravel a confusing tangle of unexplained and seemingly unmotivated events, before the jigsaw scenario is cleverly assembled in retrospect.
The informer here is Jean-Paul Belmondo and he seems to be playing one side against the other, police and crooks, but to what end?
The movie is tortuously plotted until it's all very neatly and beautifully tied up at the end and it pays homage, not just to the great Hollywood gangster movies, but to such classically poetic French films of the thirties such as "Le Jour se Leve" and "Les Quai Des Brumes".
Le Doulos is a very good gangster noir from Jean-Pierre Melville.
Like his other crime films its American influenced but with French style.
Despite the time period, all of the actors look, act and dress like characters out of a hard-boiled movie from the 1940's.
This was seemingly something that Jean-Paul Belmondo found very unsatisfying, not surprising from an actor famed for working with Jean-Luc Godard whose style was extremely loose and off-the-cuff by comparison.Like noir, this one has a cast of characters where none are good in the traditional sense.
But Silien is a police informer...American filmmaker Quentin Tarantino cited the screenplay for "Le Doulos" as being his personal favorite and being a large influence on his debut picture "Reservoir Dogs".
Luckily, he did it right and influenced one of the greatest crime films of the 1990s.What I love about Melville more than the story-telling or characters is actually the use of color.
An interesting film noir that has all the elements one would expect of the gems of the 40s and 50s made in Hollywood: trench coat, hat, and gun.Serge Reggiani is Maurice.
Just released from prison, it is not long before he is set up by his supposed friend Silien (Jean-Paul Belmondo).The cops are looking for who shot one of their own and who shot a fence.
The big cars, the scenes, the great music: it all works to make for an excellent noir experience.The ending really surprises in a way I did not expect.
The plot concerns a petty thief (Jean Paul Belmondo)who did a hitch in prison for theft, gets involved in another caper right straight away.
Jean Pierre Melville (who directed such noir fare as Army Of Shadows) shows a fine hand for dealing with the dregs of society in a film that is handsomely shot in atmospheric black & white.
40 years ago very young Belmondo plays the police informer Silien who is about to retire as a crook and gets involved in a fatal affair of friendship and betrayal.
His trench coat catches a hole in the back and the last thing Silien thinks of is to cancel his last appointment with his girl friend.(Melville originally wanted another ending: Silien calling the police) Silien looks into the mirror of death, and soon doesn't see anything at all anymore.
There are not so many films of this make to come, only director J.P.Melville returned a few times to the subject: The story of a loner on his way down the drain.Nicolas Hayer (Orphée) behind the camera looks at Paris in a very winterly mood, we meet a few extremely corrupt characters in the shadow at the edge of nowhere, underworld pure.
Whatever they are discussing, one is fascinated by the almost 10 minutes of uninterrupted film shooting, or the great lighting job at the end, when Silien drives in his American convertible (rain is falling in the studios Rue Jenner)and walks along the gray bushes toward his mansion where he finds the already deadly wounded Reggiani who warns him of the hired killer behind the paper wall.
Showdown at Siliens villa.Looking at the strange doing of Belmondo and Reggiani and Piccoli andJean Desailly and Fabienne Dali and Aime de March you soon lose the interest in understanding what is going on and why, you plainly watch strange actions in the very backyard of Paris and you feel a little sad they dont make films like that any more.
He is the better or rather at that time more experienced actor (and the better singer his life long).) But in this film he shoots a friend,and walks away.
Jean Paul Belmondo shows in Le Doulos(1961) why he was one of the coolest actors in the French cinema besides Alain Delon during the 1960s.
'Doulos' means both 'hat' and 'informer' on French streets and given the subject matter plus the trade of the leading character it is well named.
Jean-Pierre Melville was, of course, both a specialist and master of American-style French gangster films and here he does both himself and his American Masters proud.
At this time he was still shooting in Black and White which enhanced the resemblance and homage to such U.S. titles as 'The Asphalt Jungle', Melville's personal favorite, though when he DID go with color he turned out two masterpieces in 'Le Samourai' and 'Le Cercle Rouge'.
He tended to work with actors repeatedly, specifically Alain Delon - Le Samourai, Le Cercle Rouge, Un Flic - and Jean-Paul Belmondo, who even played a priest for Melville in Leon Morin, prete.
The movie strings out the ambiguity almost until the end, leaving Belmondo's actions (double-crosser or not?) highly confusing; when this is resolved in an expository sequence, one's thoughts might be to the effect of "so what," unless you like ambiguity for its own sake.
At the end, looking back over the somewhat self-conscious and over-deliberate machinations, you realize the film's impressive form and control, but I find it hard to place much value on this kind of thing - character is pretty much jettisoned, and it becomes like moving chess pieces; the intellect is obvious, but it's a closed system, extremely limited by genre and the lonely path it's chosen to tread..
The only real problems I had with the film is that the plot was a little confusing (probably less so if you are French) and there are many earlier, American Film Noir pictures that are simply better.
Gilbert is obviously an old friend, warning Maurice about one of his acquaintances : a man named Silien, he offers him food, advice, and even a gun  what follows introduces us the duplicitous relationships prevailing in the underworld.There starts a mind-blowing masterpiece of deliberate confusion, as the fundamental element on which survival is based.
This ability to lie is vital for le Doulos, literally, the man with the hat ('le Doul' in French slang), the cop informer, Silien, portrayed with the perfect mix of detached elegance and methodical professionalism, by a young Jean-Paul Belmondo.
Silien's plans feature a big house in Province, a beautiful woman, and a nice retirement for his friend, Maurice.Friendship and loyalty are recurring themes in Melville's filmography, even in a world of thugs and murderers.
And if Silien's actions and involvement with the police inspire our suspicion, a long flash-back sequence debriefs us about Silien's true motives : Melville 'got us'."Le Doulos" contains all the classic Melvillian codes.
The first scene itself is an expressionist masterpiece in the way light reveals Maurice's duplicity with only half of his face visible, an ambiguity illustrated by the swinging lamp's dizzying effect.Melville's genius is in the way he manipulates us, our regards toward the characters' motives are altered all through the film, and no conclusion is to be taken for granted, a reminiscence of the Occupation years when anyone could be a resistant or a collaborator, a friend or a traitor.
And even our perceptions change, we all see Silien as a vicious individual in the beginning, but when he takes off his hat, he's a vulnerable kid, an innocence confirmed by his smiling expression when we walks in the last scene, mirroring the first one with a sad premonition, subtly hinted by an allusion to "The Asphalt Jungle"'s ending, the theme of failure was also particularly cherished by John Huston.John Huston, William Wyler, Robert Wise  Melville, who took his name from the novelist Herman Melville, was a vivid admirer of the great American gangster films.
Near the end of Le Doulos Belmondo sits in a bar and explains the entire plot of the film to Reggiano.
Melville has captured all the surface qualities of film noir.
It makes for unengaging watching.Maybe this is a world Melville wanted to depict, but in the end Le Doulos is a tiresome whodunnit.
Jean for instance.The movie was great until suddenly Silien (Belmondo) turns into a "good" gangster...then it loses steam and credibility which all comes down to over twisting the plot without credibility.The last twist was totally unneeded and ruins the ending...the "good" bad guys kill each other...it also makes it seem squirrelly some how..
Le Doulos tells us about Maurice Faugel (Serge Reggiani), a tired gangster just out of prison who knows someone informed on him.
He plans a burglary, using his girl to check the place out and a friend, Silien (Jean-Paul Belmondo), to loan him the safe-cracking equipment.
It's a fine example of Melville's technical mastery of his craft and his fascination with film gangsters and the self-imagined world he places them in.
Belmondo, the only familiar face, who plays the multiple treble-crosser, Silien, seemed very different from the character in "Breathless", although that film was made only two years earlier.
No full answers are ever given which leads the viewer to create their own conclusions.Jean Pierre Melville has created a wonderful film which has references to the classic American film noir of the 1950's but also creates a wonderfully fresh French example of the deconstruction of the gangster image and masculinity itself.Jean Paul Belmondo is wonderful, sexy and exiting in his depiction of Silien and Serge Reggiani plays Maurice perfectly by brooding his way through the entire film.This film is a must see for all fans of the gangster genre.