Alan Ladd, ‘This Gun for Hire’ (1942)
Alain Delon, ‘Le Samourai’ (1967)
Charles Bronson, “Hard Times” (1975)
Marlon Brando, “The Godfather” (1972)
Categories
Archives
-
-
-
Recent Posts
- Review: The End (2024)
- “I think they saw me as something like a deliverer, a way out. My means of expression, my music, was a way in which a lot of people wished they could express themselves and couldn’t.” — Little Richard
- “Even to this day, I watch The Wizard of Oz like I did when I was five years old. I get really involved in it.” — Lynne Ramsay
- “The ability to think for one’s self depends upon one’s mastery of the language.” — Joan Didion
- NYFCC 2024 Awards
- A Streetcar Named Desire: That’s What Williams Wrote. Deal With It.
- “Intellect and taste count, but I cut with my feelings.” — legendary editor Dede Allen
- “My aesthetic is that of the sniper on the roof.” — Jean-Luc Godard
- November 2024 Viewing Diary
- “I have trouble working off things that are too preconceived, like storyboards.” — Terrence Malick
Recent Comments
- Russel Prout on A Streetcar Named Desire: That’s What Williams Wrote. Deal With It.
- Gemstone on “I thought girls in their teens might like to read [Anne of Green Gables], that was the only audience I hoped to reach.” — L.M. Montgomery
- Mike Molloy on November 2024 Viewing Diary
- Mike Molloy on November 2024 Viewing Diary
- sheila on “I thought girls in their teens might like to read [Anne of Green Gables], that was the only audience I hoped to reach.” — L.M. Montgomery
- Gemstone on “I thought girls in their teens might like to read [Anne of Green Gables], that was the only audience I hoped to reach.” — L.M. Montgomery
- sheila on “There’s nothing you can tell me about guilt.” — Martin Scorsese
- sheila on For Liberties: Edna O’Brien: Documentary of A Writer and A Star
- sheila on November 2024 Viewing Diary
- sheila on November 2024 Viewing Diary
- Mike Molloy on November 2024 Viewing Diary
- sheila on November 2024 Viewing Diary
- Mike Molloy on November 2024 Viewing Diary
- sheila on Exeunt, pursued by hundreds of beavers. Literally.
- Biff Dorsey on Exeunt, pursued by hundreds of beavers. Literally.
- Maddy on “There’s nothing you can tell me about guilt.” — Martin Scorsese
- Maddy on For Liberties: Edna O’Brien: Documentary of A Writer and A Star
- sheila on “You can’t dance in a long dress.” — Tina Turner
- sheila on For Liberties: Edna O’Brien: Documentary of A Writer and A Star
- Luna_Unknown on For Liberties: Edna O’Brien: Documentary of A Writer and A Star
-
And of a kin, Jean Reno tending carefully to his plant in The Professional.
Yes, someone else mentioned that on FB! This is more of a deliberate dovetail, in my opinion – Melville expressly referencing This Gun For Hire throughout Le Samourai. But Alan Ladd’s character has more of a tenderness for cats than Delon’s character does for his bird – the painful scene where Ladd smothers the cat that might give away his hiding place – Ladd is stoic about it, but you can sense how upset he is, how horrible he feels. Great performance. He and Delon even look alike.
The “pet thing”, in Melville’s hands, refracts out into an abstraction. In This Gun for Hire it;s a grungy kitten who shows up on the windowsill. It is “of this world”. In Le Samourai, it becomes something else entirely – one of my favorite elements of the picture (“WTF with that bird??”)
What is almost naturalistic in This Gun for Hire becomes surreal/abstract in Le Samourai.