Le Deuxième Souffle (1966)

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Le Deuxième Souffle (1966) – J.-P. Melville

Jean-Pierre Melville’s love of American film noir is well-known and Deuxieme Souffle (Second Breath) is an extended (150 minutes) look at a heist gone wrong.  He always said The Asphalt Jungle was one of his favourite films, although perhaps Le Cercle Rouge (1970) more closely approximates the focus on different gang members.  Here, we stick mostly with Lino Ventura, playing Gu Minda, who we see escaping from prison at the start of the film (in a silent scene reminiscent of Bresson’s A Man Condemned).  Melville carefully and methodically (everything about the film is methodical) sets the stage for us, showing us Ventura’s former friends, love, and accomplices and their milieu, before he arrives and they sequester him away in a safe house.  At the same time, we see another gang beginning to plan a big heist of platinum bars from an armoured truck.  As with many noirs, the plot is a little confusing at times (Jo Ricci, a gangster, is the true bad guy, but his brother Paul Ricci, who plans the heist, is a good bad guy – except his cronies are responsible for an attack on Gu’s friends).  Of course, everything comes down to honour with Melville and when the police inspector Blot (played cunningly by Paul Meurisse) entraps Gu into giving away his colleagues, he will do anything to restore his reputation.  In the end, the crooks and the police are shown to be little different, engaged in a game of wits and violence that always ends badly.  Nevertheless, honour must be (mostly) maintained by both.  If you love film noir, then you can’t look past Melville and his French take on it (almost better than the real thing).