Le Doulos (1962, French)

I don’t think there will ever be another movie that will make you want one of those old-fashioned trench raincoats as much as Le Doulos will. The fantastically broody Jean-Paul Belmondo wears one pretty much the entire film. He stars as Silien, an enigmatic hood who may or may not be a police informant. The film is full of solid noir-ish twists and has style to spare – the aforementioned trench coats, but also director Jean-Pierre Melville’s trademark high-contrast filming style, which suffuses the screen with sufficient shadows in which to hide all sorts of intrigue.

The more of Melville’s work I see, the more I love it. I wholeheartedly recommend Le Cercle Rouge, Bob le flambeur, and Le samourai, all crime capers cut in the same mold as Le Doulos (though Bob came some seven years earlier, and is somewhat less stylistically dramatic). Strangely, even the remakes/reinventions of Melville’s work are largely successful – I’m a big fan of both Neil Jordan’s The Good Thief (Bob) and Jim Jarmusch’s Ghost Dog (loosely samourai), each of which take a modern spin on the originals, and actually end up being the richer for it. I’m crossing my fingers that the upcoming remake of Rouge will follow suit, though Orlando Bloom is certainly no Alain Delon.