Le Samouraï

Le Samouraï (1967) is Jean-Pierre Melville's crime drama, available to watch online on iFILM. A contract killer, a grey trench coat, a felt fedora, and almost no dialogue. Pure economy of motion, right up until the plan falls apart.

Jef Costello operates like clockwork: a rehearsed alibi, a precise route, a kill carried out without a flicker of feeling. After a hit in a nightclub, one witness undoes everything, the resident pianist who saw his face. Now a stubborn police inspector tightens the net, while his own employers, spooked by the exposure, decide the safest move is to erase the man they hired. Alain Delon barely changes expression, and that glacial composure is exactly where the role's pull comes from.

Melville turns Parisian noir into something close to a zen ritual of solitude: Henri Decaë's muted photography, long silences, a hitman's code framed as the way of the samurai. The film fed directly into the work of John Woo, Jim Jarmusch and Michael Mann, and still sets the bar for the whole genre. If you love slow, cold, immaculately built cinema, this is essential. Stream Le Samouraï (1967) online on iFILM.