A killer uses his key to open the door and enter an empty fourth floor walk up apartment in Paris. In the vestibule there is a fire box hung on a wall next to the door. Taking out his gun, he places it atop the box, carefully turns around to position his back to the box, then swiftly reaches back over his head, grabs the gun and brings it down in front of him, aimed to shoot. He practices the move - reach, grab, aim - a few more times, considers, then rejects this hiding place.
Walking into the main room of this corner apartment, he surveys the simple bleak furnishings. A desk with a chair, and three mismatched chairs facing it. A credenza by the wall, windows to the street below on either side. He silently sits in each of the three chairs, and then behind the desk, trying out his perspective on the room from each vantage. We see him imagining some future event, weighing carefully the strategic advantage or disadvantage each position confers.
Gradually he goes to the credenza and repeats the ritual of hiding the gun on top and practicing the over-the-shoulder grab and draw. After a few times repeating this gesture, he seems satisfied and leaves the gun there, hidden for his future use. A last look around, the faint sound of a few passing cars, and he leaves.
We cut to later, and another, younger, man entering the same apartment. From his hat and coat we also know him to be a killer. He is one of the 3 killers that the first killer has arranged to meet in this empty, unused apartment. We admire him for the same reason we admired the first, he has come there early to scout the scene, taking every precaution to figure out the angles that may give him a later advantage. But there is something about this killer. He's cocky. Of a different generation. Without ever knowing exactly why, we don't like this guy.
We smile when we see that the first place he looks is to check on top of the fire box in the vestibule. We admire his intuition, but admire more that our first killer rejected this too easily detected hiding place. We watch him enter the same gray room, sit down in the three chairs, consider the same angles, like some black and white noir version of Goldilocks.
We are teased as he gets up to go and we are momentarily surprised and relieved that he didn't spot the hidden gun. But then he stops, looks at the credenza, and we know that he knows. He goes and finds the gun, feels its heft, pockets it, feeling good about himself. He has the advantage.
Sometime later, the first killer returns. He enters the apartment, the meeting place, to find the boss behind the desk, the two killers already sitting in the seats they have chosen, one chair left empty for him. He eyeballs the young cocky guy. Sees him for what he is. He sits, calm and cool, one against three as if that is the most customary thing in the world to him.
The conversation starts flat but heats up. They blame the killer's friend for turning rat fink. They want him dead. The killer defends his friend. He doesn't believe the stories about him ratting out. But he accepts the shared code implicit in their lives. He wants 48 hours. If he finds out his friend did what they said, he will kill him without regret. And if you don't...is the boss's only reply. They make a simple proposition to the killer. You kill your friend. Or we kill you. End of discussion.
While he's been talking we watch the killer stand up and make his way around the desk and to the window next to the credenza, as if to look outside. We quicken with anticipation of the moment as we see him work himself into his practice position, with his back to the credenza. We know the hidden gun is not there. We know that the cocky young killer knows that the gun is not there. We understand that he's letting the killer move around the room freely only because he can't wait for the moment where he reaches for the gun on the credenza and finds it is not there.
The director doesn't exaggerate the staging with the camera. Everyone's actions are real and measured. With simple eloquent shots and great non-verbal storytelling he has built his narrative to this moment of maximum suspense. We know what is going to happen and we take great pleasure in knowing.
And then what happens? The killer pulls his gun, not from behind his head atop the credenza, as he practiced, as we anticipate, as the cocky young killer anticipates, but from his pocket. A second gun. Which he uses to get the drop on all of them, leaving them helpless and impotent as he leaves.
Suddenly we realize that he planted the first gun exactly so that they could find it and would be lulled into a false sense of advantage. Suddenly we feel without even thinking it exactly what the writer and director want us to feel and constructed the scenario to allow us to appreciate, the subtle distinction between these two professional criminals.
It is a great example of the narrative art of cinema, telling stories with pictures, showing the audience the information you want them to see and understand in the sequence that will serve the story and build interest and suspense, then topping it by surprising them just at the moment where they are most sure they are ahead of the game.
It is a master class by a great filmmaker, Jean-Pierre Melville, from his movie "Le Douxieme Souffle" (Second Wind) starring Lino Ventura.
Pierre Zimmer plays Orloff, the older killer. (Coincidentally, he was also the assistant director on the original French version of The Talented Mr. Ripley known as "Plein Soliel"!)
I can't remember a better sequence in a movie in which none of the main characters are involved. It is rare, and a testament to Melville's confidence as a storyteller, that he understood the importance to giving over this much screen time to this showdown between these supporting characters.
I highly recommend this movie.
Enjoy!
william
