Le Samouraï

The implacably grave coolness of Alain Delon’s lone killer – in his iconic dark fedora, pale gray raincoat and white gloves – is sharper and more charismatic than ever in one of the most elegantly stylised films ever made. Caught between a tenacious police investigator and a ruthless mob boss after a planned hit, the assassin’s melancholy and solitude are intensified in the moony blue and utterly gorgeous images of Paris at night, under Melville’s meticulously designed monochromatic aesthetic vividly revived in the new 4K restoration. In his lucid merging of 1940s American crime cinema and 1960s French pop culture, poised with the chivalrous spirit of Japanese samurai, Melville achieved in Le Samouraï what Hitchcock called ‘pure cinema’ – the closest thing to a perfect film.

14/9 (Sat): Film talk with Long Tin