Le Deuxième Souffle (1966)

Awesome Movie

It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

I don't speak French, but the acting and the subtitled dialog are outstanding throughout.The plot and each situation, each conversation, is completely credible, and follows naturally, yet not predictably, from what came before.A note to younger audiences: there are no highly choreographed fight scenes or stylized gun battles (though there are fights and shooting). No throw-away romantic interest. No noticeable special effects. No wisecracking. No mood music telling you what to feel.So, if you're used to recent Hollywood fare, it may seem slow.But, to this noir-lover, it feels fresh, yet as gritty as a run-down apartment in a hundred year-old building.

This is the kind of film about which one yearns to have a conversation. I viewed it myself, on Turner Classic Movies, so this review is my effort to make some sense of a superlative but puzzling viewing experience. Gu, whose chiseled mug seems made for this role, is a protagonist unlike any other. We sympathize with him from the start, as his lack of athleticism threatens his life of crime in the earliest frames of this dusky film. What is he doing, leaping across tall buildings -- anyway? Director Melville never quite spells it -- or anything else in this film -- out. But we care for Gu from the start. Yet he is a cold-blooded killer of guys both good and bad. With sniper-like sangfroid, he thinks nothing of taking out a motorcycle cop accompanying an armored car. As the doomed Inspector Fardiano sneers, is he planning on adopting two slain cops' five kids? Somehow Melville makes us care about this villain, whose only smile he reserves for his glamorous and enigmatic sister Manouche (Christine Fabrega). "You deserved better," he tells her toward the end of the movie. Earlier, they embrace passionately. What gives here?? Again, hints are the most we receive from Melville. Ventura's performance is first-rate. Our eyes never stray from his presence, whether he is commandeering a pair of hapless petty thieves who have come to threaten Manouche or allowing himself, fatefully, the luxury of chewing on a candy at a game of petanque near the Mediterranean coast. Equally compelling is Commissioner Blot, played with unceasing panache by Paul Meurisse, who, only the year before, appeared in "Diabolique."Blot's character, like all the others in this film, is somewhat puzzling. He seems confident about outsmarting the bad guys -- "not everyone can have an inquiring mind." Yet, as Manouche predicts, he and his men in blue are easily duped. Witness the incredible scene when Gu, seemingly comatose from torture as he lies in a hospital bed, gives his badged overseer the slip. Yes, Manouche knew of what she spoke. Once the evil and reputation-obsessed Gu receives his comeuppance, Blot deprives Manouche of a bit of succor. Apparently he realized she wasn't as clean as she came across. Yet he drops the loathsome notebook on the ground for the benefit of the press corps. One shudders at the implications of that move. Won't it serve to stir the pot, keeping the bad guys and the cops at each others' throats? Well, without that I guess we wouldn't have noirs and policiers. The never-ending cat and mouse game carries on. And what of the platinum? Gu hid his share well. Perhaps, in a way, he provided for Manouche and her stolid bodyguard Alban (Michael Constantin) after all.I have seen one other noir by Melville ("Le Doulus"), which was interesting but made far less sense than this production. Melville is a director I'd definitely like to follow -- ideally in the company of other film buffs who savor examination and discussion!CODA: If this film seems to really "get" the bad guys, maybe that's because the author of the novel that inspired it was a truly evil man. Read the Wikipedia entry for Jose Giovanni and weep -- or perhaps feel guilty for liking this film so much.

I won't add much more to what have already said the other users. Yes, this is here a true masterpiece, directed by the greatest french directors ever. A director who was very influenced by the US crime films world. Keep in mind that Melville watched ODDS AGAINST TOMORROM more than eighty times in his life. And the sequence - in LE DEUXIEME Soufflé - where the four gangsters wait for the armored truck robbery, on the desert road, this very sequence is directly a homage to the nearly same scene, in the Robert Wises' film, where the three robbers - Ryan, Belafonte and Begley - wait before the heist.Some scenes here are also some repetitions for further Melville's films. Such as this sequence where Denis Manuel, one of the four hoodlums, is waiting with his long range rifle to hit the police motor cyclist; note that he takes the rifle sighting lense off. You'll have the very same scene, later in LE CERCLE ROUGE, when Yves Montand makes the same thing during the jewelry store heist.Or the other sequence, where Denis Manuel - Antoine's character - walks into the room where he knows he will probably have to fight against his enemy; Manuel hides a gun somewhere; and a couple of minutes later another character comes into the room, after Manuel's departure, searches and finds the famous gun, hidden just before. THAT'S THE REAL SUSPENSE. Because the audience wonders how the hell things are going to be after all this. Well, you'll find the same kind of editing, in LE SAMOURAÏ. Cops enter Alain Delon's flat, hide some bugs in order to spy him...And also a couple of minutes later, when Delon comes back to his room...Know what I am driving at?That the Melville's touch. All his greatness, that no one, after his death, has ever brought to us again. Yes, yes, yes, I am a great Melville's fan. There is not a day in my f...life where I don't suffer from his death, forty one years ago. We missed so many things. Such a pain for all of us.

I had seen nearly everything that is readily available from Jean-Pierre Melville in the United States by the time I got to Le Deuxieme soufflé, which may be part of why I didn't respond overwhelmingly to it. After such challenging, methodical and precisely existential crime masterpieces as Le Samourai, Le Cercle Rouge, Bob le flambeur and the underrated Le Doulos, this one just seemed to not pack the same kind of punch that the others did. Again, this may be the fault on the viewer for seeing this last among his mostly thriller-oriented oeuvre, but perhaps it's also some of Melville's fault too; again and again, as the dedicated and ruthless auteur that he was (one of the great French directors I would argue), he kept coming back to men in trench-coats with grim expressions figuring out on both sides- criminal and detective- of how to plot the next move or, for the former, how to keep from the fatalism of the plot.Which, for Melville, is something that comes second nature. The difference, perhaps, in this case is that the length (a whopping two and a half hours, longer than both The Red Circle and Army of Shadows) and the amount of details in the structure of the story (i.e. what happened on such and such a day made this happened could've been snipped, albeit I can't pinpoint to which) bog down some of the more successful aspects to the picture. Which is also to say that for all of its minor misgivings, Le Deuxieme soufflé (or, simply, The Second Breath) is near-classic Melville, with nail-bitingly tense suspense scenes like the opening escape from the prison and the latter heist sequence- somewhat more obvious and less coolly ambitious as Red Circle.There's the amazing cinematography as well, a trademark of Melville and his crew to make things gritty but smooth in precision and style, and the performances from Paul Meurisse as the Detective (maybe my favorite performance of the picture just for the intelligence he imbues in the character), and Lino Ventura as one of the quintessential Melville anti-heroes, Gu, the convict who wants in on the big 200 million heist. And even as it could be Melville's most "talky" picture after Bob le flambeur (which is relative to how pleasantly light, or how seemingly sparse, his films are with dialog), when the characters speak it's to the point of with some quotable spunk to them.There's an icy, unspoken angst in Melville's world of criminals, almost questioning but still true to the notion of the 'policier', where you'd want the criminals to get away with it if the detective wasn't so doggone determined all the time. It's another fine piece of film-making from the director, just not an all-time-top flick - more along the lines of Un flic. 8.5/10