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Aspect Ratio: 1.66:1
Audience Rating: Unrated
Binding: DVD
Brand: Image Entertainment
EAN: 0715515032827
Format: Anamorphic, Black & White, Digital Sound, Mono, NTSC
Label: The Criterion Collection
Manufacturer: The Criterion Collection
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: The Criterion Collection
Region Code: 1
Release Date: October 07, 2008
Running Time: 109 minutes
Sales Rank: 4381
Studio: The Criterion Collection
Theatrical Release Date: 1963
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
The backstabbing criminals in the shadowy underworld of Jean-Pierre Melville's Le doulos have only one guiding principle: Lie or die. A stone-faced Jean-Paul Belmondo stars as enigmatic gangster Silien, who may or may not be responsible for squealing on Faugel (Serge Reggiani), just released from the slammer and already involved in what should have been a simple heist. By the end of this brutal, twisty, and multilayered policier, who will be left to trust? Shot and edited with Melville's trademark cool and featuring masterfully stylized dialogue and performances, Le doulos (slang for an informant) is one of the filmmaker's most gripping crime dramas.
SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES:
New, restored high-definition digital transfer
Selected-scene audio commentary by film scholar Ginette Vincendeau, author of Jean-Pierre Melville: An American in Paris
Video interviews with directors Volker Schlöndorff and Bertrand Tavernier, who served as assistant director and publicity agent, respectively, on the film
Archival interviews with Melville and actors Jean-Paul Belmondo and Serge Reggiani
Original theatrical trailer
New and improved subtitle translation
PLUS: A new essay by film critic Glenn Kenny
Amazon.com:
Though he had forced his way into French film culture by working entirely outside his country's studio system in the 1940s and 1950s, by the 1960s director Jean-Pierre Melville was working with larger budgets and well-known actors such as Jean-Paul Belmondo, star of Le Doulos. An extension of Melville's fascination with the existential milieu of American gangster films, Le Doulos presents New Wave icon Belmondo as Silien, a man newly released from prison and by reputation a professional informer. A figure, then, of possible duplicity and ambiguity, Silien is the perfect Melvillian hero, difficult to read but propelled by internal forces manifested as direct action. Maintaining friendships with both cop and crook, Silien's notoriety as a 'finger man' who informs on the latter is underscored when one acquaintance, a police inspector (Daniel Crohem), waits in ambush for another, a burglar (Serge Reggiani), to perform his next job. But did Silien actually rat out the fellow? Melville pushes the envelope of our perceptions by making it appear Silien did, and then goes through the tale again to reveal another story. A much darker film than his celebrated Bob le Flambeur, Le Doulos is an absorbing tale of a world that seems to exist between light and shadow. --Tom Keogh
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - I'm hard on movies
Excellent movie, unpredictable plot, nice twists and turns, but the final results end up feeling a tad contrived - if it weren't for this last item, I'd give this a 5-star rating. The extras include runnin commentaries for 3 of the scenes, rather than for the whole movie, but the other extras give us insights into the director's complex character. The interview comments with Serge Reggiani are unconvincing, but this makes them even more interesting, causing us to speculate on what he really thought about working under Melville.
In summation, I can highly recommend this film.
Rating: - Betrayal and double crosses, style and irony, with some cool-looking trench coats
To dramatize gangsters because of some fictitious "code"...to romanticize them by dressing them in trench coats with the collars pulled up and Borsalinos on their heads...is not just naive, it's downright silly. One wonders what Melville, with Cagney and Raft in his system, would have done with some modern thugs like Vincent "Vinny Gorgeous" Basciano, Peter "Rabbit" Calabrese or Jake "Greasy Thumb" Guzik. These hefty slobs would look ludicrous in fedoras, and their "code" included back shooting each other.
Melville's fascination with idealized and rigidly unreachable gangsters comes across almost as weird as Hitchcock's fascination with blond ice queens who can be humiliated. We're talking fetish, and if Melville and Hitchcock weren't such masterful moviemakers they'd probably be discussed in psychology textbooks and not in articles by film historians. But Melville and Hitchcock are masterful directors, and even their failures are interesting. Melville's Le Doulos is by no means a failure. It's a story of betrayal and double crosses and then more double crosses, some real, and some by tough men who make wrong assumptions. There's a sizable body count among those who wear trench coats and Borsalinos. The movie has that gritty, depressing, shadowed look of great noirs. If you're into masterful craftsmanship, Le Doulos is hard to beat.
Le Doulos tells us about Maurice Faugel (Serge Reggiani), a tired gangster just out of prison who knows someone informed on him. He kills the ... Read More
Rating: - Melville's Promise of Films Still to Come.
Based on a novel by Pierre Lesou, Jean-Pierre Melville's French crime-thriller Le Doulos (The Finger Man) stars Jean-Paul Belmondo (Classe Tous Risques; Breathless) as Silien, a gangster recently released from prison and Maurice Faugel (Serge Reggiani), also an ex-con. As the film's title suggests, Silien may have informed on Faugel to the police following what should have been a simple heist. Through the characters of Maurice and Silien, Melville's film explores themes of friendship and loyalty between criminal anti-heroes, who live by a code of "Lie or die." In a film rich in trench coats, fedoras, shadowy alleys and jazz, Melville combines elements of film noir and gangster crime films with French new wave techniques. The eight-minute interrogation scene, filmed in a single shot, is reason enough to experience Le Doulos.
Chronologically, while the film precedes Melville's masterpieces of the genre, Le Samourai (1967) and Le Cercle Rouge (1970), it foreshadows those later films. The newly restored Criterion edition of Le Doulos includes a high-definition digital transfer; selected-scene audio commentary by film scholar Ginette Vincendeau, author of Jean-Pierre Melville: An American in Paris; video interviews with directors Volker Schlöndorff and Bertrand Tavernier, who served as assistant director and publicity agent, respectively, on the film; archival interviews with Melville and actors Jean-Paul Belmondo and Serge Reggiani; the original theatrical trailer; and a new essay by ... Read More
Rating:  - A Theft and Revenge Story
1949 La Silence de la Mer
1950 Les Enfants Terribles (Criterion) *****
1953 Quand tu liras cetta lettre
1956 Bob le Flambeur (Criterion) *****
1959 Deux Hommes dans Manhattan
1961 Leon Morin
1962 Le Doulos (Criterion) ***
1963 Aime de Ferchaux
1966 Le Deuxieme Souffle (Criterion) *****
1967 Le Samourai (Criterion) *****
1969 Army of Shadows (Criterion) *****
1970 Le Cercle Rouge (Criterion) *****
1972 Un Flic ****
Jean-Pierre Melville has made some noir masterpieces. I would not call this a masterpiece (I've rated the Melville films that I have seen above, the ones without stars are ones I haven't yet seen) but Melville and film noir fans will find enough here (Melville's stoic tough guys in trenchcoats and hats, the self-conscious homages to the American cinema of the 1930's, and the cold as nails world view accented by a cool jazz score) to keep them glued to the screen for 1 hr and 49 minutes.
The plot: Maurice Faugel (Serge Reggiani) is a thief whose fresh out of jail. One of the old gang, Gilbert Varnove, is helping Maurice out until he gets back on his feet, but Maurice doesn't know who he can trust anymore. He suspects that someone set him up years ago, and he suspects that that someone might just be Gilbert Varnove. Additionally, for some inexplicable reason, Maurice has befriended a new kid named Mr. Silien (a fresh faced Jean ... Read More
Rating: - Melville on speed
Le doulos = hat = police informant.
For Jean-Pierre Melville, this is a surprisingly fast-moving story based on the distrust between criminals, police and police informants. It turns into a fine whodunnit so it helps to keep you wits about you.
This is the second Jean-Paul Belmondo performance I've seen in a Melville films and they were both outstanding. He is more subdued in these films than is typical for Jean-Paul, yet he has more life and dimensions than Alain Delon who would become Melville's choice for later films. Lesser-known Serge Reggiani is equally splendid in the other major role of the film (he is the focus of the first half of the film).
This is a B&W film with 60s clothing styles for the women and 50s style for the men (trenchcoat and hats). Not as distinctive as the other films I've seen of Melville's, but, because of its storytelling and pacing, it's one I can recommend to people who wouldn't tolerate his slower-paced films. In other words, this one is just plain fun.
If you're lucky, your DVD will include commentary for selected scenes and an on-camera lecture by French film expert, Ginette Vincendeau. If so, it will likely include comments by Assistant Director to Melville, German-born Volker Schlondorff. Both are extremely fluent in English and offer fascinating information.
Hopefully, there is or will be a Region 1 DVD available. If you have a multi-region DVD player, there's a Region 2 available at the Amazon.co.UK ... Read More
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