However, due to the promulgation of the government's film subsidy bill, short artistic films that are very different from the "high-quality traditional" film styles can flourish. Among all kinds of arbitrary expressions, there is a director who stands out because of the bold and innovative vitality that is filled with the characteristics of B-level films in his works. He is Jean-Pierre Melville.
This "Lone Killer" is one of the masterpieces that made him famous. On the surface, "Lone Killer" is more like Alain Delon's solo show than a movie. In the movie, he plays a fringe killer who has no identity background and only a carefree name that is mentioned and suspected by the police in the police station at random. There are no relatives, no lovers, only a bird in a cage with messy feathers sharing with him in the damp and lonely apartment the silence of time stagnation. He wears a round-brimmed top hat and a decent overcoat. The cutting of the collar and cuffs seems to have become a living creature, which also exudes a hint of restraint and emotion. Wearing a classical pistol on his chest, his profile in the mirror forgets about time and solidifies into a sculpture with blood slowly flowing through.
Alain Delon, with his sad and indifferent gaze, shuttled through the streets of Paris like a shining fish. The gloomy night is his nourishment, and the gentle and passionate woman is a beam of light that flashes in his cold ocean. It's fleeting, and soon it doesn't bring any temperature. Because he was suspected by the police during a mission, he was hunted down by a killer group. In the process of investigating the head of the group, he lurked into the nightclub to look for a female singer who might know it, but was killed by the ambush police for carrying a pistol.
The story of a killer ended abruptly, but unfortunately there were no bullets in that pistol. It is empty and hidden in the pocket, like a person, but without heart. In other words, his loneliness is becoming more and more lonely because of the desire to escape from loneliness.
When it comes to ending like this, one has to mention "The City That Never Sleeps". The same desperadoes, the same pistol without bullets. However, "The City That Never Sleeps" is filled with belief and doubt, the sticky desire to give and betrayal, but in "The Lone Killer" it becomes so light that people can't detect the taste, and only the sorrow that is still unfinished.
In Melville's films, it is not difficult for us to find the creative source of certain Hong Kong directors. Although Wu Yusen admits that he has benefited a lot from it. But I think even more that Wong Kar-wai's movies are undoubtedly more like Melville's Hong Kong twins. The iconic characters in Wong Kar Wai's movies, the apartment, the martial art, the corridor, the loneliness of wanting to talk, all appear like a revolving lantern in Melville's "Lone Killer". It's just that Wong Kar-wai's techniques are more modern, and of course his own unique hobbies and tastes are added.
But perhaps it is precisely because of this unique style that "World Film History" compares Melville and Jean Renoir's contributions in the history of film, and jokingly calls Melville the grandfather of the New Wave. However, some traces of the new wave can be found in him, extreme personalization, meticulous depiction of personal emotions, nothing to do with politics, and no preaching. Completely, it is a movie that can belong to any person for exclusive use. And indeed, to some extent, it set the precedent of "author's film", but in his time, this style did not form a genre.
"Lone Killer" may not be considered a standard good-looking movie according to the current point of view. But as an attempt at that time to find another way, it undoubtedly has an irresistible sense of beauty. Seeing exquisiteness in simplicity is about the shortest evaluation I can think of.
Bibliography: "The History of World Cinema" Christine Thompson, David Bodwell
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