Smouldering Minimalism at Kino-Teatr
EBM HUMPHREYS on Delon’s Le Samourai (1967)
An unexpected humour was injected into my first knowing foray into French New Wave when one of my companions innocently protested at the absence of Japanese swordplay. “We told you it was French,” we whispered back anxiously. Once this question was settled, we all, thankfully, thoroughly enjoyed this film, myself from both an entertainment and a curious-film-nerd perspective. Nothing tickles the nerd-nerve like watching an old film which feels for all the world to be composed entirely of scenes you have seen ten times: this surely marks a film as seminal.
In spite of the eerie feeling of watching a textbook lone-assassin story, the plot and staging were compelling enough, and I was impressed by the film’s intense colour scheme: no spoilers to say grey. Apartment walls were painted in Dulux bleak. Today, this film would doubtless be shot in black and white.
We were, however, struck by just how much goes unsaid: I found myself being quite liberal afterwards in mentally filling in the characters’ off-screen activities, to suit my taste. Clearly the hero does love the girl. Clearly the caged bird means everything. Clearly the Samurai code by which we are to assume the hero lives contains this, this and that regulation? Perhaps there is something of an intention within this minimalist storytelling – to incite the viewer to exercise their imagination to an extreme degree, arguably trickiest in film of all the arts?
Le Samourai stimulated my desire to see the other Alain Delon films featured by Kino-Teatr, but sadly I was unable to. I wonder what makes Delon a star worthy of a retrospective, and was especially gutted to miss their generous free screening of Zorro. I thought of this performance as forerunner to Bladerunner’s Ryan Gosling, smouldering with completely interiorised emotion … and remain curious about how it related to the mainstream of its time. Then again, Delon’s stardom was probably based on more obvious criteria. I can tell you that Youtube offers an eleven-minute ‘Beauty analysis’ of his handsome face…
I love the Kino-Teatr as a setting for any film. Happily, we finally overcame the lure of the armchairs for the better views in the ‘proper cinema’ seating. I wouldn’t have wanted a head spoiling my view of this meticulous greyosphere, even if it is one of Delon’s least sexy roles.
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