Le Doulos

1962, Jean-Pierre Melville
This is really a terrific gangster movie. The tropes of the genre are all in place, nearly to parody, more as icons, as trophies. They, for example the trenchcoated sillouhette, are used as functions thematically and plot-wise to crack open how these people live in dreams, traped in this world, unable to escape. Also pleasurable are the 'buried treasure' and the general dryness of the dialogue.
Melville's mis-en-scene remains notable for its longer takes and movement, more often than not quietly, yet dynamically, with quite some elegance (though that is rather too fey a term). It is difficult to say much about the work more than it is simply well done; some scenes have greater depth, the car scenes with more perpendicular views, and so on. The fast film stock and the high contrast simply, alomg with a great eye for overhanging angles of streetlamps and stairways, simply makes for a series of iconically beautiful scenes, shot in an economic manner.
The plot has a laconicism that flirts with but rarely becomes silly (playful). Melville's signature move is of suspense before mystery; we think we know what we don't. And then he turns on us; we didn't really know, they did. The themes are of loyalty, of friendship above all, and of willingness to trust, the perils of not doing so, the perils of doing so. Solidarity is key. This is all encapsulated in Belmondo playing his joint-best post-bullet performance; amusing for its references, it silliness, and at once its pathos. A terrific ending.