Le Samouraï

Jean-Pierre Melville

 
Le Samouraï (Criterion DVD)

DVD

1 Disc

SRP: $29.95

Criterion Store price:$23.96

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  • France
  • 1967
  • 105 minutes
  • Color
  • 1.85:1
  • French
  •  
  • Spine #306

SYNOPSIS: In a career-defining performance, Alain Delon plays a contract killer with samurai instincts. A razor-sharp cocktail of 1940s American gangster cinema and 1960s French pop culture—with a liberal dose of Japanese lone-warrior mythology—maverick director Jean-Pierre Melville’s masterpiece Le Samouraï defines cool.

Cast & CreditsOpen

Cast

Jef CostelloAlain Delon
SuperintendentFrançois Périer
Jane LagrangeNathalie Delon
Valérie, the pianistCathy Rosier
Man in the passagewayJacques Leroy
WienerMichel Boisrond

Credits

DirectorJean-Pierre Melville
ScreenplayJean-Pierre Melville and Joan McLeod
ProducerRaymond Borderie and Eugène Lépicier
CinematographyHenri Decaë
Assistant directorGeorges Pellegrin
MusicFrançois de Roubaix
Production designFrançois de Lamothe
EditingMonique Bonnot and Yo Maurette

Disc Features

  • New, restored high-definition digital transfer
  • New video interviews with Rui Nogueira, author of Melville on Melville, and Ginette Vincendeau, author of Jean-Pierre Melville: An American in Paris
  • Archival interviews with Melville and actors Alain Delon, François Périer, Nathalie Delon, and Cathy Rosier
  • Theatrical trailer
  • New and improved English subtitle translation
  • PLUS: a 29-page booklet featuring film scholar David Thomson, filmmaker John Woo, and selections from Melville on Melville

From the CurrentView the Current »

Film Essays

Le Samouraï: Death in White Gloves

By David ThomsonOctober 24, 2005

Tone and style are everything with Le samouraï. Poised on the brink of absurdity, or a kind of attitudinizing male arrogance, Jean-Pierre Melville’s great film flirts with that macho extremism Read more »