Paris Envy

[malsperanza]

People who know me well (but who, dear Reader, really knows any of us well?) can affirm that I have a habit (a bad Hobbit, as my karate teacher used to say) of falling into odd little temporary obsessions. Or not so temporary. So lately I have been on an Alain Delon kick. Now I would be the first person to acknowledge that Alain Delon is not a great actor. He is not Belmondo; he is not Trintingnant. But in his prime he was a damn fine piece of meat, or as the French say, a bit of the old friandise de l'oeil.

So I bought and watched "Borsalino and Co." on DVD, a movie I have always been fond of not because it's a good movie, which it is not, but because, well, Alain Delon in a borsalino. And I enjoyed all the fashion statements as much as ever.

But then I also bought Le Samourai, which Criterion has recently restored and released on disc. I had never seen any of Jean-Pierre Melville's movies. Why? Where was I? How could I have missed this? This is the most amazing movie. It is astonishing. Somewhere in the bonus materials, someone remarks that Delon and Melville understood that a movie star doesn't act; he is seen. Well, that's certainly true in the case of Delon, but in this nearly dialogueless movie it works perfectly. And Delon has never been more heartwrenchingly, dangerously, genderbendingly frighteningly beautiful. Paris in the rain is equally beautiful and grim. Melville says he wanted to film a black-and-white film with color stock, and he did it.

And Delon wears a fedora. Even better than a borsalino! If that were possible.

* * * *

Some blogspam:

James Urbaniak outdoes himself, celebrating the end of his tragic lawsuit against the nefarious uberVerizonist Josh Emery:

http://urbaniak.livejournal.com/37468.html?nc=29

OK, well, you maybe have to have been following the saga from the beginning to get all that, but still: dancing Chuck Norris and baby pandas, how can you go wrong?

And Cleolinda, the Internet's best film critic, is one-upped by a rodent:

http://cleolinda.livejournal.com/401004.html?nc=97

Comments

[noblerot.livejournal.com]

Dude, you must see Le Samourai on the big screen. Alain Delon's face, sans emotion, two stories high, monolithic.

May I make some suggestions? *curtsies* If you'd like more Melville, try Le Cercle Rouge and Bob Le Flambeur. And for some exquisite Delon camp, rent The Assasination of Trotsky. Richard Burton as Trotsky; Alain Delon as a killer with an icepick. It's like a bad-film orgasm.

[malsperanza.livejournal.com]

Dude, 30-foot-tall blankface Alain Delon? Dude, I am there.

Unfortunately, it is not playing on a big screen anywhere. But "Army of Shadows" has just been rereleased. I know "Bob le Flambeur," but have never seen "Le Cercle rouge." And to see Alain Delon with an icepick I would even sit through Richard Burton as Trotsky.

*muses*

Some things about the 1960s remain an abiding mystery to me, and I even lived through them. Frex, why on earth did people keep casting Richard Burton in things? I mean, Paul Scofield and Peter O'Toole were right there, but no, they had to cast Burton. It is as inexplicable as Norman Mailer.

Those Who Know Me Well know that one of my more embarrassing obsessions is with the 1990s TV show "La Femme Nikita," which is in most respects as bad as TV ever gets. Terrible scripts, cheap production, horrible acting, politically offensive premise... except that it is the TV godchild of "Le Samourai," filmed in black and white on color stock and with a strange Quebecois actor named Roy Dupuis, who has never done a decent bit of work since, but who has mastered an Icepick Stare and a gender ambiguity that even Delon would not sneeze at. And it has the world's most vicious Eco-style open ending ever filmed in TV or cinema.

"La Femme Nikita" is of course based on the eponymous film, which is by Luc Besson. And the male lead (named Michael on TV) is named Bob in the film, as an hommage to the Flambeur.

But the Samourai is way stranger and more brilliant than Bob le Flambeur. If the protagonist of "8 1/2" were a lovelorn sociopathic assassin...

Borsalino

[j-alexandra.livejournal.com]

On a recent, rain-soaked trip to France, mon cher pere needed a hat, and bought himself a gen-you-wine Borsalino. The vrai McCoy. He'd always wanted one, ever since seeing Alain Delon in his heyday.

You can come see it, if you like. It's really quite nice.

Re: Borsalino

[malsperanza.livejournal.com]

and rainproof and you can fold it and it will get its shape back