Before any images are seen at the beginning of Le deuxième souffle, viewers must first read through two short texts. The first, a disclaimer assuring us that the film is not intended as an endorsement of either career criminal Gu Minda's homicidal "code of honor" or the deceptive and brutal tactics used by the French police, in "this work of fiction based on a novel" (as if the redundancy of that phrase somehow distances them from any potential culpability for copycat behavior by either the gangster or law enforcement elements who might be watching.) Presumably, the apologetic reminder was tacked on by nervous studio heads fearing some kind of censorious reprimand from the voices of decency who would object to director Jean-Pierre Melville's amoral stance in presenting such violence to a mass audience as entertainment. I have a hard time thinking that Melville would have put the statement in the film himself, and I also have to assume that he wasn't exactly pleased that it led off the program.
However, the following text was surely appended according to Melville's instruction: "A man is given but one right at birth: to choose his own death. But if he chooses because he is weary of life, then his entire existence has been without meaning." It's the kind of existentially lofty grand pronouncement about the condition of the universe that French intellectuals routinely bestow upon their audiences, a well-practiced skill that they've elevated into its own art form. But it's also one of those aphorisms better designed at making an impact on a casual observer for its short-term impression of profundity; upon more extended, serious reflection, the essential hollowness of the statement when applied to real life shows it to be grandiose bullshit. There are a lot of people (men, women, children) who die in circumstances that have no bearing at all on the intrinsic meaning of their lives, and certainly a lot of deaths are not "chosen" in any rationally meaningful sense of the word. But if we strip away the axiomatic insistence that hovers over this bold pronouncement, then a brief glimmer of truth begins to break through. For those who reach that point of maturity and self-determination where their actions actually do go on to influence, if not completely dictate, the manner of their death, then it's quite reasonable indeed to ponder the choices they make. We can even speculate about the internal motives that an onlooker might be able to discern from the patterns of behavior that preceded that moment of fatal determination.
With those two considerations in mind then, as a film Le deuxième souffle, which is usually translated into English as the equivalent of a "second wind," might best be understood as a doomed man's extended "last gasp." It's that gulp of breath taken in the midst of that tension between distancing himself from the unintended implications of his actions as they're perceived and interpreted by others, while also retaining a claim of meaningful autonomy over the meaning of his life. Every step of Gu's journey puts him in significant peril from both the law and the criminal underworld, for each of these forces wield their own form of punitive justice - soul crushing confinement and humiliation from the one, and brutal execution at a moment's notice if caught by surprise by the wrong people from the other. From the initial jail break where we first meet him, through his fortuitous return to Paris to settle some old scores and bail his few close comrades out of trouble, to his incognito escape to Marseilles and voluntary enrollment in a major platinum heist, Gu is a man operating under protest, continually repudiating through word and deed the assumptions of his rivals that, under significant enough pressure, he'd break the rules that prohibit even a robber and killer as he is from betraying his partners in crime. Gu is a man capable of any form of brutality in the execution of a job, or an enemy, but to accuse him of actually squealing to the police, of turning informant - that's an accusation that he cannot let stand under any circumstances.
So we can understand his outrage when he is eventually tricked into spilling the beans, in a brilliantly staged set-up by undercover police playing the part of gangsters in charge of the territory where Gu is hiding out, awaiting ship's passage to Italy that will smuggle him into a less dangerous situation. The cops' successful emulation of the mob's uncompromising tactics catches Gu off guard, to the extent that he blabs crucial information aimed at clearing up his captors' misunderstanding of his role in the platinum robbery, that is then caught on tape. It's the kind of fateful slip-up that Gu should have seen coming, should have been wary of stumbling into, would never have happened if he had retained the sharp-edged determination and steely reticence required of a man in his position. As far as we can tell, it matters little to him whom he has killed, what relationships he's had to sacrifice or the costs of his crimes to countless victims, known and unknown over the course of decades lived as a crook. What finally drives Gu to exasperation, even to the point of suicidal despair, is the idea that others who know him would draw the conclusion that he'd violated the code of honor, caved in when the authorities leaned in hard, gone soft in order to win himself some concessions when it came time for the judge to render his verdict. Whatever other pains, deprivations or even death Gu might have to accept as his fate, as much as he could control it, he was determined to not let his final reputation be that of a stool pigeon.
Jean-Pierre Melville cuts himself a considerable swath of film time in order to establish that point, and he does so with gritty, slow-burning clarity over two and a half hours that simmer with emotional tension and patient confidence that the end of the story will justify his deliberate approach. It's clearly a declaration of deeply felt principles that mean a lot to a man who fought in the French Resistance during World War II. He had undoubtedly seen numerous examples of how that code was both upheld and transgressed by friends and foes alike, and over the course of subsequent decades as a filmmaker who operated somewhat outside of the conventional establishment, the allure of safety, compromise and betrayal seems to have been met with his own expression of continued resistance as well. Indeed, he makes a point on several occasions in the supplemental interviews that accompany Criterion's DVD release of Le deuxième souffle that he continued to stand apart from both the mainstream French film industry and the nouvelle vague directors like Godard and Truffaut who had previously regarded him as a role model and forerunner of their own cinematic movement. Melville turned down films routinely, he claimed, simply because he didn't feel like making them, even though some of the titles he mentioned went on to become commercial successes, and even though he was acting against the advice of esteemed figures like Jean Renoir, who encouraged him to take any job offered to him simply because such opportunities were not to be taken for granted and might not be extended in the future.
Perhaps in these interviews, Melville was engaging in a bit of self-mythologizing; he certainly gives every impression of a man capable of doing that, and with great relish, in just about every recorded conversation I've ever seen from him. But even if that's the case, I find him a fascinating and compelling study, as an artist in particular, and the way he tells his stories. I always like to find a quote from the film to start off and, in a way, provide a theme for each of the reviews I post here. I like the one that I found, spoken by Inspector Blot as he recognizes Gu's final trajectory to a bloody resolution that will clear a few other victims, deserving or not, with him when he makes his exit from the world. But really, some of the film's greatest dialogue can't be quoted here - thoughts and feelings communicated through knowing glances, between Gu and Manouche, between Blot and the assorted miscreants he's destined to spend his life pursuing in an endless game of cat and mouse. Poignant moments of eye contact that contain recognitions of strength, vulnerability and character that resist tidy codification in "the rules," written or unwritten as they may be.
Next: Fighting Elegy