Summary
Roberto Borgo, a tough hitman, returns to Marseilles to clear his friend Xavier Saratov
of a murder charge. He soon runs into the gang of crooks who implicated Xavier in
the crime. Having dispatched their leader, Villanova, Roberto takes charge, and
blackmails the crooks into building up a fund for Xavier’s defense. Robert’s efforts
prove in vain: Xavier loses the case and is sentenced to 20 years’ hard labour.
Later, Roberto is involved in a bar-room shoot-out with another band of criminals.
He survives the gunfight but is arrested and sent to the same prison as his friend Xavier.
Both men are prepared to risk anything to regain their freedom...
Review
Anyone who had previously seen Jean Becker’s 1961 film
Un nommé la Rocca could be forgiven for having a strong sense of déjà
vu when watching this film. La scoumoune is effectively a re-make of that film,
which itself was based on José Giovanni’s own novel L’Excommunié.
The sense of familiarity is compounded by having acting legend Jean-Paul Belmondo playing
the same lead character in both films.
The director José
Giovanni rated L’Excommunié as one of his favourite works, and an obvious
subject for screen adaptation when he became a film director. He was probably also
motivated by his frustration with Jean Becker’s earlier adaptation of his novel.
Un nommé la Rocca suffered greatly because of intervention from the producer,
who wanted to tone down the violence and immoral tone in Giovanni’s novel. The result
was a pretty bland gangster film, which satisfied neither Giovanni nor the film’s star,
Belmondo. La scoumoune was Giovanni’s attempt to set the record straight
and tell his story in the way he had intended. In contrast to the sanitised earlier
adaptation, La scoumoune is far more explicit in its depiction of death and violence,
one of the things which makes this the better of the two films.
The film’s main strength
lie in its visuals. The photography is of a high standard – particularly the prison
and mine-clearing scenes towards the end of the film. In addition, the fight sequences
are fast, furious, and very bloody, having a sense of realism that was probably quite
daring at the time.
When this film was made,
its lead actor Jean-Paul Belmondo had become less of an actor and more an international
superstar, after the roar-away success of such films as L’homme de Rio and Borsalino
. As a consequence, his performance in this film (and many subsequent films)
is somewhat marred by his halo of success. Belmondo was far more accessible and
enigmatic when he was an unknown quantity.
Despite some clumsy padding
(such as the ridiculous attempt to rescue Xavier and Roberto from the prison), this is,
overall, an entertaining film, and an interesting study of the morality of the criminal
milieu.
© James Travers 1999
|
