List Price: $39.95You Pay Only: $22.99 You Save: $16.96 (42%)Prices subject to change.
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Aspect Ratio: 1.66:1
Audience Rating: Unrated
Binding: DVD
Brand: Image Entertainment
EAN: 0715515032926
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: 144 minutes
Sales Rank: 3414
Studio: The Criterion Collection
Theatrical Release Date: 1966
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
With his customary restraint and ruthless attention to detail, director Jean-Pierre Melville follows the parallel tracks of French underworld criminal Gu (the inimitable Lino Ventura), escaped from prison and roped into one last robbery, and the suave inspector, Blot (Paul Meurisse), relentlessly seeking him. The implosive Le deuxième soufflé captures the pathos, loneliness, and excitement of a life in the shadows with methodical suspense and harrowing authenticity, and contains one of the most thrilling heist sequences Melville ever shot.
SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES:
New, restored high-definition digital transfer
Audio commentary by film scholar Ginette Vincendeau, author of Jean-Pierre Melville: An American in Paris, and film critic Geoff Andrew of the British Film Institute
New video interview with director Bertrand Tavernier, who served as publicity agent on the film
Archival footage featuring interviews with Melville and Lino Ventura
Original theatrical trailer
New and improved subtitle translation
PLUS: A new essay by film critic Adrian Danks
Amazon.com:
It's hard to imagine that crime novelist/screenwriter José Giovanni didn't write with melancholy tough guy Lino Ventura in mind. First came 1960's Classe Tous Risques, then 1966's Le Deuxième Soufflé, and then 1969's Sicilian Clan. In Jean-Pierre Melville's Giovanni adaptation--the title translates as 'Second Wind'--Ventura plays deadly, yet deeply moral lifer Gustav 'Gu' Minda. When the 46-year-old busts out of the pen, three people wait for him in Paris: nightclub proprietor Sophie Manouche (Christine Fabréga), double-crossing rival Jo Ricci (Marcel Bozzuffi), and manipulative Inspector Blot (Diabolique's Paul Meurisse). After Minda and Manouche’s unflappable bodyguard, Alban (Le Trou’s Michel Constantin), dispatch the thugs trying to blackmail Manouche, the former partakes in an armored-car heist in order to flee the country with the cool blonde (like the bank robbery in Michael Mann's Heat, this entire sequence plays out in broad daylight). Needless to say, not everyone gets out alive. Compared to sleek Melville classics like Bob le Flambeur and Le Samouraï, this 144-minute movie has its longeurs, but Melville and Ventura go together like Scorsese and De Niro. Consider this understated drama a dry run for their Resistance-era masterpiece, Army of Shadows (in which Meurisse also appears). Supplemental features include detail-oriented commentary from author Ginette Vincendeau (Jean-Pierre Melville: An American in Paris) and programmer Geoff Andrew (the British Film Institute), remembrances from publicist-turned-director Bertrand Tavernier, an essay by critic Adrian Danks, and TV interviews with Ventura and Melville, who describes the actor as 'a force of nature' and 'a monolith.' --Kathleen C. Fennessy
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Another of Melville's existential thugs struggling with the Code, and with 144 minutes to do it in
Nearly two-and-a-half hours is a long, long time in the movies, especially so when Jean-Pierre Melville is once more demonstrating his passion for hard boiled gangsters. With Le Deuxieme Souffle (Second Breath), it seems to me that Melville has given us some extraordinary set pieces of heists, shoot-outs and chases...including one roll-along-the-floor-while-shooting-a-gun-in-each-hand-and-plugging-all-the-guys-who-were-going-to-plug-you that now has become a pretty-boy-actor-as-tough-guy cliché. They are embedded, however, in an over-long story featuring yet one more of Melville's existential heroes that he came to obsess about. Melville underlines it all with his stoic gangster code of conduct, illustrated by the pretentious words that start this movie: "A man is given but one right at birth: To choose his own death. But if he chooses because he's weary of life, then his entire existence has been without meaning." Let me tell you something...nothing, nothing will go right as long as Gu Manda, cold-blooded murderer with a soft spot for Manouche, believes his buddies think he ratted them out. The Code won't permit it.
Is this to deny that Melville was a great director? Hardly, but it is to recognize that Melville was human: He didn't always make great movies; his preoccupation with gangsters and their fictitious code of conduct was limiting; his indulgence in what passes as "style" in the gangster milieu could appear, in my opinion, downright silly; and as a screenwriter he was capable ... Read More
Rating: - The Ventura advantage
One of the chief merits of this film is having Lino Ventura as star instead of the more glamorous Belmondo or Delon (Melville's typical choices). Ventura has no veneer. His hangdog face and stocky body give an authenticity and grittiness to it -- even in the midst of the usual Melville iconography of trenchcoats, American cars, and jazz. And, unlike the other two actors, he naturally embodies the fatalism that's a vital part to this story.
This is probably my favorite of Melville's gangster films. It's a study of loyalties (based on a novel by José Giovanni) and it has more depth than his other gangster films. Best of all, it has characters that are intelligent and capable -- forcing them to engage in battles of wits before they can engage in gunplay.
There's Blot, the Police Inspector (personified by Paul Meurisse), who possesses a Sherlock Holmesian cleverness. There's the mysterious Orloff (Pierre Zimmer) whose quiet skill seems to be a precursor to Alain Delon's role in Melville's next movie, LE SAMOURAÏ. And even Manouche (Christine Fabrega) is proactive altho her primary purpose is to provide an emotional center for the film.
There are many tense, engrossing episodes in this 2 hr 10 min film which make the slow spots that bridge them seem less like slow spots.
My thanks to Criterion for making this fine film available. That makes 11 Jean-Pierre Melville films that I've seen. 3 to go.
The Criterion DVD has a detailed film commentary ... Read More
Rating: - Melville's First-Class French Caper.
Jean-Pierre Melville's 1966 film, Le deuxième souffle, stars Lino Ventura (Classe Tous Risques) as dangerous gangster, Gustave Minda (also known as "Gu"), Paul Meurisse (Diabolique) as suave Inspector Blot, and Raymond Pellegrin (A Fistful of Hell) as Paul Ricci. The French crime-thriller tells the story of Gustave's escape from prison, only to discover upon arriving in Paris that his sister is being blackmailed by other criminals. With Inspector Blot in pursuit, Gustave then plots one last daring heist to steal enough money to retire from his life of crime. Shot in crisp black and white, the suspenseful robbery sequence is reason enough to experience this first-class French caper, and will appeal to fans of Le Cercle Rouge, Le Doulos, Le Samourai, and Bob le Flambeur.
The Criterion edition of this DVD includes: a newly restored high-definition digital transfer; audio commentary by film scholar Ginette Vincendeau, author of Jean-Pierre Melville: An American in Paris, and film critic Geoff Andrew of the British Film Institute; a new video interview with director Bertrand Tavernier, who served as publicity agent on the film; archival footage featuring interviews with Melville and actor Lino Ventura; the original theatrical trailer; and a new essay by film critic Adrian Danks. Highly recommended.
G. Merritt
Rating: - A prison escape, a heist, and a Colt .45
Film noir master Jean-Pierre Melville's 1966 2 hr. and 24 min. mob epic has everything you want to see in a Melville film: a prison escape sequence, gangland violence, cool jazz clubs with leggy blondes, Colt .45's, fedoras, crime bosses putting together crews to pull off big jobs (in this case 1 billion in platinum bars), an intricately planned and executed heist sequence, stakeouts, hideouts, double-crosses, betrayals, brutal interrogations involving torture, revenge, and, most importantly, memorable characters (on both sides of the law) who live by their own private codes.
Its very hard to imagine what the careers of Coppola, Scorsese, Friedkin, Woo, and Tarantino (to name just a handful of Melville's progeny) would be were it not for the hard-hitting but cool film noirs of Melville who provided the archetypes and templates for virtually every mob film to follow. But the pleasures of Melville's films are many and no single filmaker that followed Melville into this genre (that he didn't invent but that he certainly elevated) exercises his craft with as sure a hand and with as much integrity as Melville himself. This is due to the fact that Melville brought to the highly formulaic genre of film noir his experience as a resistance fighter in WWII and so when he puts together a murder sequence, an interrogation sequence, or any number of sequences involving men doing battle with their conscience and with each other there is a realism (albeit a highly stylized realism) and an authenticity that is ... Read More
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