Film Review
The Corsican Joseph Damiani, better known as José Giovanni,
found fame as a novelist, screenwriter and film director. A
former convict who was sentenced to death but rehabilitated, he drew
the inspiration of his novels from his personal experiences, as well as
from the people he had known in Le Milieu, the Parisian criminal
underworld.
Not long after his release from prison, Giovanni
wrote his first novel, which recounted his own unsuccessful
break-out; this was shortly later adapted for cinema by director
Jacques Becker as
Le Trou (1960), one of the
finest prison escape films.
Giovanni's subsequent novels were also made into films, many to become
classics of French cinema. These include Claude Sautet's
Classe tous risques (1960),
Jean Becker's
Un nommé La Rocca (1961)
and Jean-Pierre Melville's
Le Deuxième souffle
(1966). Robert Enrico directed two of Giovanni's novels (with
some picturesque flair) as
Les Grandes gueules (1966) and
Les Aventuriers (1967).
As well as serving time as a screenwriter and dialogist, Giovanni also
directed several adaptations of his novels, including:
Le Rapace (1968),
Deux hommes dans la ville
(1973),
Le Gitan (1975) and
Le
Ruffian (1983). His novels and films tend to revolve
around the same themes: male friendship, a code of honour,
loyalty, treason, revenge and the confrontation of the individual with
nature (with nature invariably gaining the upper hand).
La Loi du survivant was the
first film that Giovanni directed. Released on 19th April 1967,
it is a sombre and intense thriller based on his novel
Les Aventuriers, which also spawned
the film of the same title directed by Robert Enrico.
Whilst the latter film concentrates on male comradeship (between two
chalk-and-cheese characters played by Lino Ventura and Alain Delon),
Giovanni's film deals with darker themes and, whilst not intended as a
sequel, gives a hint as to what happens to Ventura's character, the
survivor of the first film.
Filmed on the director's home territory of Corsica,
La Loi du survivant represents a
promising filmmaking debut, even if the film suffers a little from its
uneven pacing and all-too-obvious nods to American cinema of the
period. The Corsican landscape provides a suitably grand and
forbidding backdrop for the tense, sometimes brutal drama, the ordeal
being as much psychological as physical for the unfortunate
protagonists. Admirers of Giovanni's later, more commercially
oriented films, will be surprised by the slow pace of what is a much
more restrained and cerebral kind of thriller.
Francois de Roubaix, a frequent collaborator of Giovanni, provides
another suitably evocative score which is in perfect harmony with the
dark undercurrents of the story. Giovanni's films are impeccably
cast, and this is no exception. One of the more familiar heavies
in French cinema, all too often confined to supporting roles, Michel
Constantin proves himself here in a made-to-measure role that makes
good use of his physique, macho charm and sensitivity. The
stunning Canadian actress Alexandra Stewart is equally well suited for
the part of Hélène, the enigmatic femme fatale who
provides the crux of an intricately crafted narrative. Roger
Blin, another fine actor with a long and illustrious film career,
offers up a deliciously villainous turn as the enigmatic and cruel
jailer.
On its first release in France,
La
Loi du survivant attracted a respectable audience of 0.6
million. It was an encouraging start for the crime
writer-turned-director who had a knack of telling compelling stories
that reflected not only the gangster milieu he was familiar with, but
also society in general. José Giovanni was a man with a
message and by becoming a fully fledged filmmaker he was in a
privileged position to broadcast that message to the widest
audience. His best and possibly most important film,
Deux hommes dans la ville was a
whole-hearted repudiation of the French judicial system that would add
impetus to the movement for the abolition of capital punishment in France.
© Willems Henri (Brussels, Belgium) 2013
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Next José Giovanni film:
Le Rapace (1968)