Le Deuxième souffle
France
1966
144 Min
Black and White
French
Synopsis
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 souffle 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. —The Criterion Collection
Director
Jean-Pierre Melville
Jean-Pierre Melville (born Jean-Pierre Grumbach) was an amateur filmmaker as a teenager who, after the start of World War II, began making his own independent short and feature films. He hit his stride in the ‘50s with his memorable adaptation of Jean Cocteau’s novel, Les Enfants Terribles, and, over the next 20 years, specialized in intelligent and exciting crime films, most notably Bob le Flambeur, Le Doulos (aka The Finger Man), Le Samouraï, Le Cercle Rouge, and Un Flic. Melville also acted in his own Deux Hommes Dans Manhattan, as well as Cocteau’s Orphee, Jean-Luc Godard’s À Bout de Souffle (aka Breathless), and Claude Chabrol’s Landru (aka Bluebeard). He died in 1973.
(From http://www.allmovie.com/cg/avg.dll?p=avg&sql=2:102465 )
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Christopher Smith
19Mar09
Stylish crime drama from director Jean-Pierre Melville unfortunately just never really takes off. It's slow-paced and talky much of the time, and the plot is too murky and the characters not lively enough to be really compelling. It is a well-made film, and stylish in that very French way, but it is too dry and overlong to develop the suspense it should.
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By Adam Suraf on November 28, 2008
Aging gangster Lino Ventura escapes from prison and lands a gig in an armored truck robbery in this quintessential policier from Jean-Pierre Melville, adapted from Jose Giovanni’s novel with a remarkable… read review
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