The second breath

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Movie
German title The second breath
Original title Le deuxième souffle
Country of production France
original language French
Publishing year 1966
length 144 minutes
Age rating FSK 18
Rod
Director Jean-Pierre Melville
script Jean-Pierre Melville,
José Giovanni based
on the novel
Un règlement de comptes
by José Giovanni
production Montaigne,
Jean Pierre Melville
music Bernard Gérard
camera Marcel Combes
cut Michèle Boëhm
occupation

Second Breath is a French crime film directed by Jean-Pierre Melville from 1966 .

action

Gustave Minda, known as “Gu”, breaks out of prison with a friend after eight years in prison. Gu is a notorious gangster, known in the organized crime milieu, where he enjoys a high reputation for his reliability. In Paris he finds old friends again: the nightclub owner Manouche and her waiter Alban; he meets the two of them just as Jo Ricci, an amoral nightclub owner and trader, has them threatened by two crooks. Gu overpowers the crooks and shoots them on the way out of town. After this double murder, whose “handwriting” refers to Gu, the experienced inspector Blot picks up Gus's lead.

Manouche and Alban initially hide Gu on the outskirts of Paris and help him escape to Marseille , from where he tries to escape to Italy. But Gu wants to fix his financial situation first. In Marseille he meets his friend Paul, brother of Jo Ricci and active in cigarette smuggling who is planning an attack on a platinum transport escorted by two motorcycle police officers . Gu agrees, even if he has to murder one of the police officers. The attack succeeds as planned, but Inspector Blot sets Gu, who is trying to go into hiding with the help of his girlfriend Manouche, in which he seems to betray his friend Paul. Gu does not want to let this loss of honor sit on him; Once again he escapes from the hospital - after deliberately harming himself during a torture interrogation - to wash himself off of this stain. He kidnaps Commissioner Fardiano, who arrested him in Marseille, presses a written admission of his dubious interrogation methods from him and also murders this police officer. Gu is badly wounded in a bloody argument with his former accomplices in Marseille. At a lost post he shoots the arriving police and is shot when the fire is returned. Blot passes Fardiano's confession to the waiting press.

background

The type of relationship between Gu and Manouche remains unclear. In the dialogue, Manouche is even referred to several times as Gu's "sister". Melville said: “The 'sisters' are women in the milieu. If I have allowed some to believe that Manouche is Gu's sister, it is because of the part of me that is attached to Les enfants terribles - or rather to Pierre, or The Ambiguities of my great namesake. "

reception

Adrian Danks regards Jean-Pierre Melville's ninth and up to this point most successful film in France as its turning point from the abstract, elementary and iconographically precise and hyper-masculine gangster milieu films such as Three O'clock (1955) or The Devil with the White Waistcoat (1962) to extended, refined and philosophically reserved works such as the following Der eiskalte Engel (1967) and Four in the Red Circle (1970). It was also Melville's last film that he shot in black and white.

criticism

  • Reclam's Guide: The plot is reminiscent of a dozen films, but Melville's direction gives the film a distinctive quirk. He tells his story in a cool and distant way and dispenses with affects as well as the convenient categorization into “good” and “bad”. This also determines the antagonism of Gu and Blot. The methods of the police seem here, reduced to the mere occurrence, hardly less questionable than those of the crooks; the opponents become interchangeable.
  • Lexicon of international film : Melville's classic gangster film in the tradition of "film noir" offers exciting crime entertainment and shows a gangster microcosm that perishes due to its own conventions and rules.

swell

  • Lexicon of International Films, Reinbek, Rowohlt, 1991
  • Dieter Krusche: Reclams Filmführer , Stuttgart, Reclam, 1973

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Rui Nogueira: Cinema of the Night - Conversations with Jean-Pierre Melville . Alexander-Verlag, Berlin 2002. ISBN 3-89581-075-4 .
  2. ↑ The second breath. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed November 27, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used