Le Deuxième souffle (1966)
Directed by Jean-Pierre Melville

Film Review

By the mid-1960s, the film policier was well on the road to becoming one of the mainstays of French cinema, although most films in the genre (including some notable early offerings from Jacques Deray and Edouard Molinaro) were little more than watered down versions of Jules Dassin's Du rififi chez les hommes (1955). The only French filmmaker to have brought prestige to the genre was Jean-Pierre Melville, who delivered two of the finest French homages to American film noir with Bob le flambeur (1955) and Le Doulos (1962).  Melville's third gangster film, Le Deuxième souffle, takes the policier into new, grittier territory and presages the tougher, more action-oriented crime films of the 1970s.  Don't be put off by Alain Corneau's ghastly 2007 remake of the same title; Melville's original version is easily one of the director's finest and most important works, a meticulously plotted policier that distinguishes itself with its unflaggingly inventive mise-en-scène and flawless performances from a superb cast.

The central themes of Le Deuxième souffle are those that prevail through much of Melville's oeuvre: honour, loyalty, redemption and failure.  As in Bob le flambeur, Le Cercle rouge and Un flic, the film's centrepiece is a perfectly planned heist that is carried out successfully by a band of extremely well-organised crooks.  As in Le Samouraï, the central character is an outlaw who values his honour above everything else and ends up dying so that his honour may be restored to him.  Characteristically, there is no clear moral boundary between the lawbreakers and the lawmakers - Melville appears to be totally unconcerned with the rights and wrongs of criminal activity.  What distinguishes the good guys from the bad is not whether they are crooks or cops, but whether they have a code of honour and are willing to stick to it. 

Melville's preoccupation with honour and betrayal doubtless stem from his involvement with the French Resistance during the Second World War.  He was of that generation for whom personal honour was sacrosanct.  The character that Lino Ventura plays in this film - and would virtually reprise in Melville's later L'Armée des ombres (1969) - is the quintessential Melvillian hero, the living embodiment of that famous line from Shakespeare's Richard II: "Mine honour is my life; both grow in one: Take honour from me, and my life is done."  In Melville's dark, lonely macho world, the only thing a man has that is worth holding onto is his honour.  The caption that opens the film makes the bold statement that the only choice a man has in life is the choice of his death.  If this choice is determined by an unwillingness to go on living, his life is meaningless.  When he leaves his mistress for the last time and sets out for a final showdown with his enemies, Gu Minda has made up his mind to die, not because he is tired of life, but because he cannot bear to live a life without honour.

Melville could not have made a better choice than Lino Ventura for the part of the main protagonist Gu Minda (even though he had earlier contracted Serge Reggiani for the role).  A former wrestler, Ventura has the solid bear-like physique that makes him ideal for the part, allowing him to dominate every scene he appears in; but he also brings a nobility, moral authority and just a hint of vulnerability to his tough guy portrayal, making him a far more humane and likeable character.  Gu Minda may be a hardened criminal, someone who can put a bullet into a man as easily as look at him, but he is not unsympathetic.  In the best tradition of film noir, he is less a villain and more a victim of the milieu he has allowed himself to become trapped in.  His one ambition is to escape and start a new life, an ambition that will be cruelly thwarted.

Gu's nemesis, the redoubtable police chief Blot, admirably portrayed by Paul Meurisse, is a far more ambiguous character.  When Blot is introduced to us he is more vaudevillian than threatening, not too far removed from the supercilious character that Meurisse had played in Georges Lautner's popular comedy-thriller Le Monocle noir (1961).  Blot positively drools with snidy sarcasm as he interrogates the witnesses of a barroom killing, literally putting words into their mouths.  But as he pursues Gu, a darker side to Blot's character emerges.  Like his underling, Inspector Fardiano, he appears willing to use any means possible to capture the criminal and his associates.  Just when we think we know who Blot is, he surprises us one more time, right at the end of the film.  He makes a connection with Gu and redeems both himself and the gangster by exposing the fraud by which Gu was robbed of his honour.  Blot resembles the shady resistance leader that Meurisse would later play in L'Armée des ombres, a man who turns out to be far more than he seems.

By contrast, the true villains of the piece are clearly signposted: Marcel Bozzuffi's gangster Jo Ricci and Paul Frankeur's Inspector Fardiano have no redeeming features, both are prepared to stoop to any means to achieve their objectives.  They are the morally bereft counterpoint to the Minda-Blot pairing, and even though Fardiano is acting from far nobler motives than Ricci, he is just as deserving of our contempt.  Fardiano demeans his profession by resorting to underhand tactics, just as Ricci demeans himself by betraying his brother Paul (Raymond Pellegrin).  One of the more interesting characters is Manouche, the token woman in what is so evidently a man's world.  Stylishly played by Christine Fabréga, Manouche is the archetypal Melvillian heroine -  she seems to understand better than anyone else what is going on, and yet she is completely powerless to influence events.  She offers Gu a way out, a chance to start a new life, but she is like a child standing on the sidelines of a battle scene.  All she can do is watch helplessly as the men go about their business, like sheep marching insouciantly downhill towards the abattoir.

Le Deuxième souffle shows a subtle departure from the American noir stylisation of Melville's previous crime films and anticipates the creeping minimalism of his later films.  Melville wrote the screenplay in collaboration with José Giovanni, a former criminal who narrowly escaped a death sentence and subsequently found success as a writer and filmmaker.  Adapting his novel Un règlement de comptes, Giovanni draws on his own experience to paint a starkly realist portrait of the criminal underworld (le Milieu) and the French judicial system.  Melville's mise-en-scène builds on this and the result is far grittier, far more naturalistic than anything else Melville directed.  The film's two big set-pieces, the prison break-out at the beginning and the drawn-out heist sequence half-way through, are enacted with next to no dialogue and no music, something that brings an unbearable tension to both scenes.  (The influence of Robert Bresson's Un condamné à mort s'est échappé  and Jules Dassin's Du rififi chez les hommes is evident in these sequences.)  What is perhaps more surprising is how remorselessly violent Le Deuxième souffle is.  Every physical assault and every killing are staged to provoke a shock reaction, never letting us forget the brutality of the dog-eat-dog world in which they take place.  Gu's ill-treatment at the hands of the police is particularly graphic and manages to be even more viscerally shocking than the climactic shootout in which most of the dramatis personae come to a very sticky end.

It is interesting that in his subsequent gangster films Melville would turn away from realism and gravitate towards a more stylised representation of violence.  From Le Samouraï onwards, Melville ceased to be preoccupied with merely imitating American film noir and appeared to be driven increasingly to deconstruct the genre, stripping away layers of artifice in an attempt to get at the bare essentials and perhaps uncover just why it is we find crime films so compelling.  Whilst Melville's gangster films are thematically very similar, stylistically they show an extraordinarily pronounced transition, which takes us from the sordid reality of Bob le flambeur to the dreamlike abstraction of Un flic.  Le Deuxième souffle comes at the mid-point of this journey, a grimly brutal thriller that proved to be an important milestone in the development of the French film policier.  With nine full-length films under his belt, Jean-Pierre Melville had already come to be recognised as one of France's most important filmmakers, but his four greatest films were yet to come...

Film Synopsis

Eight years into his prison sentence, a notorious gangster named Gustave Minda (nicknamed Gu) escapes and returns to Paris.  Having killed two men who are blackmailing his former mistress Manouche, he goes into hiding.  With the help of Manouche and her faithful protector Albin, Gu plans to flee the country and start a new life abroad.  Before he does so, however, he agrees to lend his support to a gold bullion robbery organised by his old friend Paul Ricci. Meanwhile, Superintendent Blot and Inspector Fardiano are hot on Gu's heels and are prepared to use any means to bring him to justice.  Having lured Gu into a trap, Fardiano tricks him into implicating Paul Ricci in the bullion robbery.  Having escaped from police custody, Gu has just one thought: to clear his name and take revenge on those who betrayed him...