Le Samourai: Alain Delon plays an assassin in Jean-Pierre Melville's celebrated film noir
Melville's portrait of a killer bound by his samurai-inspired code of ethics pushes a philosophical idea of perfectionism and was to be much imitated by directors such as John Woo.
Alain Delon, François Périer, Nathalie Delon; Jean-Pierre Melville
Perfectionism was the antithesis of the French New Wave: tired of standard Hollywood trappings but nonetheless inspired by film noir, directors such as Jean-Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut took long-established cinematic standards and tore them apart, breaking their carefully constructed conventions down into creative movies that were by and large celebrated.
But within this world also existed the anomaly that was Jean-Pierre Melville. Classified as a "New Wave filmmaker" even though he was anything but, Melville was equally inspired by the post-war genre of guns and girls - but rather than caricaturing noir, the director instead sought to perfect it.
Le Samourai is his most celebrated effort and with good reason, the film coming off almost pseudo-biographical in its efforts to portray a perfectionist assassin.
Skip this section if you've heard it before: a killer bound by his samurai-inspired code of ethics takes on an assignment through passion rather than logic, and later falls prey to both the police and his employers.