087 - Second Wind (Le Deuxieme Souffle), 1966, France. Dir. Jean-Pierre Melville.

Tuesday, March 28, 2017

087 - Second Wind (Le Deuxieme Souffle), 1966, France. Dir. Jean-Pierre Melville.

Homework assignment: Write a story featuring characters with the names Gu, Blot, Fardiano, Orloff, and Manouche.

Go!

Jean-Pierre Melville is up to the challenge.

Of course he had a lot to live up to with the original Melville using names such as Bartleby, Billy Budd, Babo, Atufal, Hunilla, Oberlus, Ishmael, Queequeg, Mapple, Bildad, Peleg, Ahab, Stubb, Tashtego, Flask, Daggoo, Fedallah.

And Starbuck.

Yes, Starbuck.  Your coffee was named for a Herman Melville character, the chief mate of the Pequod in Moby Dick.

After they rejected calling it Pequod's.

Starbuck's was founded by an English teacher, a history teacher, and a writer.  Thank you, gentlemen, for honoring great American literature with your name.

But enough about Herman.  Let us return to Jean-Pierre.

This Melville is returning to his bread and butter.  His oeuvre.

The crime drama.

Jean-Pierre Melville loves American crime dramas.  He makes them in France.  He Frenchifies them.  And he is good at it.

NOVEMBER 20, 5:58 am

Three men have scaled a wall.  They look over the two guards walking to the other wall opposite them.

We remember a movie made ten years before, which we saw last week, Robert Bresson's A Man Escaped (1956) (079, March 20).
 
They jump from their wall to the opposite wall.  One man overshoots the second wall and falls over the other side.  The other two men scale down by rope and grappling hook.  When they get to the ground, they find their friend deceased.

They pull out changes of clothes and change clothes.

They run through the woods.

They jump a freight train.

Gustave Minda sits in the freight car in the dark.  He takes a moment to catch his breath.  He lights a cigarette.

Gu has escaped.

MARSEILLE, MOVEMBER 20, 11:00 pm

A club.  Jo Ricci's place.  Jazz music.  Dancing women.

Are we still on for December 28?

Yes.

They are going to pull a job on December 28.

Please do not leave town until then.  You are indispensable.

No one is indispensable.

PARIS, NOVEMBER 21.

What is wrong?  Gu's escaped.  Let us go home.  I . . .

Manouche, the owner, is talking to Alban, the bartender.  They seem to be more than owner and bartender.

The second bartender is named Marcel le Stephanois.  He is called by his last name, le Stephanois.  This is a shout-out to Jules Dassin's 1955 French crime thriller, Rififi, featuring the lead character Tony le Stephanois.  We will be seeing that movie later this year, and you will love it.

Some men come in and shoot up the place.  They knock out Jacques the Lawyer.  He was Manouche's date.

Alban, the bartender, immediately pulls out his gun and fires back.  He hits one of them.

He picks up Manouche off the floor.  He helps her to a chair.  He places a phone call.  Clear everyone out within five minutes.

Commissioner Blot arrives.  He asks questions.  No one answers them.  No one provides help.  Commissioner Blot is unmoved.  He will find out what happened.  He will find his man.  He will get his job done.  He will get justice.

Earlier this year we saw the film Diabolique (1955) (012, January 12).  The actor Paul Meurisse played Michel Delassalle, the head of a boarding school, who openly kept both a wife and a mistress, who was cruel to them both, and who was the object of their mutual displeasure.  The women teamed up and removed him from their lives.  The rest of the film was about what happened to him afterwards.  And how it affected them.

Now, eleven years later, in Le Deuxieme Souffle, Paul Meurisse plays Commissioner Blot.  This time, he is likeable, hard working, intelligent.  He is good at what he does.

MARSEILLE, NOVEMBER 22

He's been in a coma for two days.  Didn't you call a doctor?  Yes, but he's been calling your name.  He's delirious.  I'm going to Paris with you.

PARIS, NOVEMBER 23, 12:25 am

Manouche and Alban close up and drive off.  She drives.  She tells him that Jacques kept asking her to go away with him.  Maybe he really did love me.

When they arrive at the house two men accost them.  They handcuff Alban and leave him on  the floor.  They take Manouche inside.  They are about to begin interrogating her when . . .

Gu to the rescue.

He enters the building, surprises the men, has Manouche get the handcuff keys and free Alban, asks the men questions, puts them in their own car.

Takes care of them.

If you shoot someone while the car is driving at high speed on the open road in the middle of nowhere, nobody hears the report.

Alban and Gu leave the two dead men in their own car, parked in the woods out in the open.  No one heard a gunshot.  No one saw anything.  The men will be found in their own car.

Manouche picks them up in her car.

Alban and Manouche have a place where they can hide Gu for awhile.

NOVEMBER 25

Blot knows what is going on.

He talks to his people, has it figured out.

He goes to Jo Ricci, at his club, and warns him.

Blot's warning provides a good plot summary for the rest of us.  He has everything figured out.

The two men were small-time burglars.  They walked into Jo Ricci's club.  They overheard talking.  They thought they could go muscle Alban and Manouche.  They got in over their heads.  Gu came and took care of them.  Small time bandits knocked off by a big-time professional.  Blot finds the file where the same kind of killing happened 15 years ago, and everyone suspected Gu then.  He sees Gu's hand in this.

Blot knows that Gu will probably try to skip town, try to skip the country, but that he will come to Jo Ricci's place first to eliminate him.  He warns Ricci that he knows where you are but you do not know where he is.

He advises Ricci to be safe.  Your son is graduating soon.  You will want to be alive to attend his graduation.

The story is now set up nicely.

Gu is a world-class gangster.

Blot is a world-class investigator.

We are building to the final showdown.  The championship game between the greatest offense and the greatest defense.

It could be Robert De Niro versus Al Pacino in Michael Mann's masterpiece Heat (1995).

The tension is building.

The pacing is increasing.

The showdown is coming.

Grab your popcorn, fasten your seatbelts, and come along for the ride.