Film Review
Jean-Pierre Melville concluded his illustrious filmmaking career with a
film that was a bold attempt to revitalise the genre that he had made
his own - the gangster thriller, which had its origins in American
crime films of the 1930s and '40s.
When it was first released in
1972,
Un flic received mixed
reviews and was far less commercially successful than Melville's
previous, similarly themed thriller,
Le
Cercle rouge (1970). The film was by no means a
failure - it attracted an audience of almost 1.5 million in France -
but it is often written off as one of Melville's weaker offerings, less
impressive than his previous masterpieces,
Le
Samouraï (1967) and
L'Armée des ombres
(1969). Yet
Un flic is,
in many ways, the most daring of Melville's films, both in its
stylisation - a striking fusion of the expressionistic motifs of
classic film noir with a gritty modern realism - and in its uncompromising depiction of
a moral equivalence between cops and hoodlums. Today, it is
generally less well-regarded than Melville's other films, but it is of
some historic importance, being influential in the development of the
neo-noir thriller in the 1970s, both in France and in the United States.
The film begins with the most effective opening of any of Melville's films
- an almost dialogue-free, masterfully constructed heist sequence that
is stunning in its simplicity and chilling in its detachment. The
Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa was greatly influenced by Melville in
his crime films; here Melville returns the compliment by emulating
Kurosawa's use of the elements to create a mood of unrelenting
oppression, the sound of the wind and the fierce breaking of the waves
upon the seashore dominating the soundtrack. We do not yet know
any of the protagonists who participate in the hold-up, we have no
emotional connection with either the crooks or their victims, but the
sequence is nonetheless completely spellbinding. It is a bleak overture for what
is to come, Melville's darkest and most cynical portrayal of the moral
overlap between lawbreakers and those who seek to apprehend them, by
whatever means. It is no accident that the two main characters in the
film - the hardened police chief Coleman and the redoubtable crook
Simon - are friends and share the same mistress. The two
characters are practically mirror images of one another - they just
happen to exist on opposite sides of the law.
Yet there is one fundamental difference between Simon and Coleman - the
former, the crook, is an artist who relishes the challenge of his
nefarious exploits; the latter, the cop, is a soulless functionary who
does what he does simply because that is what is expected of him -
there is no joy in what he does, no gratification if he succeeds.
There is also a moral separation between the two characters.
Simon lacks the ruthlessness of his nemesis, and this is what ultimately
brings him down. Rather than kill his wounded fellow gang member
at the outset, Simon insists he be placed in a hospital and treated -
it is a fatal error which provides Coleman with just the lead he needs
to track down the robbers. By contrast, Coleman shows no such
scruples. When his informer lets him down, he delivers a
thrashing that will ensure the same mistake will not be repeated.
When he sees one of the gang members about to commit suicide, he does
not intervene, he just waits for the act to be completed - much tidier
for all concerned.
Coleman may appear to be as focussed and ruthless as Clint Eastwood's
Harry Callahan in his
Dirty Harry films, but he is
far from being a lone angel of justice; rather, he is merely a cog in a
vast judicial machine whose sole purpose is to catch and punish
criminals. Alain Delon's Coleman is virtually a carbon copy of
the same actor's portrayal of the hit-man in
Le Samourai - both resemble
dehumanised automata, single-mindedly carrying out their function,
apparently without any awareness of what they may lose or gain by doing
so. Melville's antipathy for the police is evident in all of his
films - he wants us to side with the hoodlums, to appreciate that they
conduct their activities far more honourably and deserve admiration for
the nobler human qualities they exhibit - loyalty, integrity, courage,
imagination - even though they must, inevitably, fail. This
close, almost obsessive, identification with the outsider most probably
stemmed from Melville's experiences in the French resistance but it
could just as easily reflect the director's neuroses as an independent
filmmaker. Melville was, after all, someone who had always been
excluded from 'the system' and had had to make his own way, often at
great personal cost.
Un flic may resemble
Melville's previous gangster films (the plot has some obvious
similarities with
Le Cercle rouge)
but it is markedly different in tone - much darker, far more intense,
the characters far less well-defined. By the late 1960s, the
policier had become the mainstay of French cinema and was set to become
even more popular in the decade to come, but it needed a new lease of
life. Melville's last film provided just that, primarily though
its blurring of the moral demarcation between the lawbreakers and law
enforcers, which meant that we could no longer be sure who was on the
side of the angels. This new breed of thriller - the
néo-polar or neo-noir thriller - would become phenomenally
successful in both France and the United States and fed on popular
anxieties over the way in which the state and large corporations could
abuse their power, without any danger of being called to account.
The moral ambiguity that underpins much of Jean-Pierre Melville's
cinema became central to this new kind of thriller and is evermore
present in today's even murkier noir thrillers. (Does anyone
believe that today's governments and corporations are less powerful and
less susceptible to corruption than they were forty years ago?)
Un flic is a far more important film
than some will have us believe. It is too easy to pick holes in
the narrative and to deride its (admittedly risible) special
effects. It may not be as technically flawless as Melville's
previous gangster films, but it is, for all that,
a highly effective thriller, one that has inspired many other
filmmakers. Melville's very distinctive brand of cinema did not
end with his thirteenth and final film. It continues to this day,
under the stewardship of other, equally committed, film directors - and
not only in France. The dark, glacial world of Jean-Pierre
Melville continues to haunt us, like a nightmare that refuses to go
away.
© James Travers 2012
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Next Jean-Pierre Melville film:
Le Silence de la mer (1949)