It was inevitable that Alain Delon, the embodiment of cinematic cool, and Jean-Pierre Melville, whose oeuvre operated on the same wavelength, would join forces. It was only a matter of time – and timing. After a few false starts, including a proposed adaptation of Main pleine by Pierre Lesou (whose novel Le Doulos Melville made with Jean-Paul Belmondo in 1962), Melville sold the hot young actor on a script tailored especially for him. The result was 1967’s Le Samouraï, the first of three collaborations between them, now streaming on the Criterion Channel in its impeccable 4K restoration.
Precisely how original Le Samouraï’s screenplay is has long been a subject of debate. Melville admitted taking inspiration from Graham Greene’s This Gun for Hire, but some sources (including the IMDb) credit a novel by Joan McLeod called The Ronin, which appears to be as apocryphal as the epigram from “Bushido” that Melville opens with. “There is no greater solitude than that of the samurai,” it reads, “unless it is that of the tiger in the jungle… perhaps…” This appears over a static shot of a man in a room smoking a cigarette, but it’s not just any man, nor is it any room, although it’s nondescript enough, it could be.
This is Melville’s introduction to contract killer Jef Costello, whose living space – with its gray walls and minimal furnishings – reflects the impression (or lack of one) he seeks to leave on anyone who sees him. His uniform is a trench coat, fedora, and white gloves, and in spite of his striking good looks (he is, after all, played by Delon in his prime), that’s all Jef expects any witness to remember when describing him.
His workday begins at 6 p.m., when he steals a car right out from under a cop’s nose and drives to a garage where its license plates are changed and he picks up a gun (a transaction made without either party uttering a word). He then proceeds to the apartment of his lover, Jane (played by Delon’s then-wife Nathalie), to begin establishing his alibi. “I like it when you come here,” she says in the film’s first dialogue scene, “because you need me.” Jane clearly needs him as well, though, the way she answers every knock at her door with an expectant “Jef?”

Jef’s next stop is an all-night poker game, which will provide the other part of his cover, before heading to the club owned by his quarry. He leaves the car’s engine running while he goes inside and coolly carries out the hit. Several employees clock him as he exits, though, including an unnamed pianist, whose unwillingness to identify him in a lineup is as much a mystery to Jef as it is to the police. Chief among them is an unnamed superintendent who knows Jef is their man in spite of his spotless record, but is unable to hold him because of his airtight alibi.
The lack of names for all but a handful of the characters lays bare how they’re written not as individuals, but rather types filling a function in the plot. Process is Melville’s primary interest here. How does a criminal manufacture an alibi? How does one steal a car or break into an apartment? How do the police interrogate dozens of suspects in one night? And most importantly, how do they catch a killer while the trail leading to him is still warm?
For a time, it appears Jef has gotten away with murder. In spite of his knack for losing the cops who try tailing him, though, that he got picked up rattles his employers, and instead of paying him off, they try to eliminate him. Melville puts the viewer in the same boat as Jef by cutting to a moving shot at the exact moment his contact shoots him, a stylistic break that signals the destabilization of his meticulously ordered life. When they come back to him with an apology and the front money for another hit, the changes in how he goes about it make it clear how fatalistic his outlook has become.
On its release in France, Le Samouraï was Melville’s greatest success, even if the critics weren’t completely on board. He also made headway into the US market when it went out as The Godson in 1972 to ride the coattails of The Godfather. The film has since proved influential in its own right, however, inspiring filmmakers ranging from John Woo to Jim Jarmusch, whose 1999 homage Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai also received the Criterion treatment. One major difference between them: while Forest Whitaker’s Ghost Dog often reads from Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai, his counterpart has no need to. From the way Delon expertly underplays him, Jef Costello has completely internalized the mindset.
The 4K restoration of “Le Samouraï” is now streaming on the Criterion Channel in its full Criterion edition.