Un flic (1972)
Directed by Jean-Pierre Melville

Film Review

Jean-Pierre Melville concluded his illustrious filmmaking career with a film that was a bold attempt to revitalise the genre that he had made his own - the gangster thriller, which had its origins in American crime films of the 1930s and '40s. When it was first released in 1972, Un flic received mixed reviews and was far less commercially successful than Melville's previous, similarly themed thriller, Le Cercle rouge (1970).  The film was by no means a failure - it attracted an audience of almost 1.5 million in France - but it is often written off as one of Melville's weaker offerings, less impressive than his previous masterpieces, Le Samouraï (1967) and L'Armée des ombres (1969).  Yet Un flic is, in many ways, the most daring of Melville's films, both in its stylisation - a striking fusion of the expressionistic motifs of classic film noir with a gritty modern realism - and in its uncompromising depiction of a moral equivalence between cops and hoodlums.  Today, it is generally less well-regarded than Melville's other films, but it is of some historic importance, being influential in the development of the neo-noir thriller in the 1970s, both in France and in the United States.

The film begins with the most effective opening of any of Melville's films - an almost dialogue-free, masterfully constructed heist sequence that is stunning in its simplicity and chilling in its detachment.  The Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa was greatly influenced by Melville in his crime films; here Melville returns the compliment by emulating Kurosawa's use of the elements to create a mood of unrelenting oppression, the sound of the wind and the fierce breaking of the waves upon the seashore dominating the soundtrack.  We do not yet know any of the protagonists who participate in the hold-up, we have no emotional connection with either the crooks or their victims, but the sequence is nonetheless completely spellbinding.  It is a bleak overture for what is to come, Melville's darkest and most cynical portrayal of the moral overlap between lawbreakers and those who seek to apprehend them, by whatever means. It is no accident that the two main characters in the film - the hardened police chief Coleman and the redoubtable crook Simon - are friends and share the same mistress.  The two characters are practically mirror images of one another - they just happen to exist on opposite sides of the law.

Yet there is one fundamental difference between Simon and Coleman - the former, the crook, is an artist who relishes the challenge of his nefarious exploits; the latter, the cop, is a soulless functionary who does what he does simply because that is what is expected of him - there is no joy in what he does, no gratification if he succeeds.  There is also a moral separation between the two characters.  Simon lacks the ruthlessness of his nemesis, and this is what ultimately brings him down.  Rather than kill his wounded fellow gang member at the outset, Simon insists he be placed in a hospital and treated - it is a fatal error which provides Coleman with just the lead he needs to track down the robbers.  By contrast, Coleman shows no such scruples.  When his informer lets him down, he delivers a thrashing that will ensure the same mistake will not be repeated.  When he sees one of the gang members about to commit suicide, he does not intervene, he just waits for the act to be completed - much tidier for all concerned.

Coleman may appear to be as focussed and ruthless as Clint Eastwood's Harry Callahan in his Dirty Harry films, but he is far from being a lone angel of justice; rather, he is merely a cog in a vast judicial machine whose sole purpose is to catch and punish criminals.  Alain Delon's Coleman is virtually a carbon copy of the same actor's portrayal of the hit-man in Le Samourai - both resemble dehumanised automata, single-mindedly carrying out their function, apparently without any awareness of what they may lose or gain by doing so.  Melville's antipathy for the police is evident in all of his films - he wants us to side with the hoodlums, to appreciate that they conduct their activities far more honourably and deserve admiration for the nobler human qualities they exhibit - loyalty, integrity, courage, imagination - even though they must, inevitably, fail.  This close, almost obsessive, identification with the outsider most probably stemmed from Melville's experiences in the French resistance but it could just as easily reflect the director's neuroses as an independent filmmaker.  Melville was, after all, someone who had always been excluded from 'the system' and had had to make his own way, often at great personal cost.

Un flic may resemble Melville's previous gangster films (the plot has some obvious similarities with Le Cercle rouge) but it is markedly different in tone - much darker, far more intense, the characters far less well-defined.  By the late 1960s, the policier had become the mainstay of French cinema and was set to become even more popular in the decade to come, but it needed a new lease of life.  Melville's last film provided just that, primarily though its blurring of the moral demarcation between the lawbreakers and law enforcers, which meant that we could no longer be sure who was on the side of the angels.  This new breed of thriller - the néo-polar or neo-noir thriller - would become phenomenally successful in both France and the United States and fed on popular anxieties over the way in which the state and large corporations could abuse their power, without any danger of being called to account.

The moral ambiguity that underpins much of Jean-Pierre Melville's cinema became central to this new kind of thriller and is evermore present in today's even murkier noir thrillers.  (Does anyone believe that today's governments and corporations are less powerful and less susceptible to corruption than they were forty years ago?)  Un flic is a far more important film than some will have us believe.  It is too easy to pick holes in the narrative and to deride its (admittedly risible) special effects.  It may not be as technically flawless as Melville's previous gangster films, but it is, for all that, a highly effective thriller, one that has inspired many other filmmakers.  Melville's very distinctive brand of cinema did not end with his thirteenth and final film.  It continues to this day, under the stewardship of other, equally committed, film directors - and not only in France.   The dark, glacial world of Jean-Pierre Melville continues to haunt us, like a nightmare that refuses to go away.

Film Synopsis

A gang of crooks raid a bank in a windswept coastal town on the west coast of France.  In the course of the robbery, one member of the gang sustains a gunshot wound and must be taken to a clinic for treatment.  Meanwhile, Parisian cop Édouard Coleman divides his time between his professional duties and secret liaisons with his mistress Cathy, who works in a nightclub belonging to his best friend Simon.  What Coleman does not know is that Simon is the leader of the gang which carried out the recent coastal bank robbery, and which is now preparing another heist: the theft of a large consignment of drugs whilst on transit on a train from Paris to Lisbon.  The meticulously planned theft goes off without a hitch but Simon makes one fatal mistake and Coleman soon picks up the trail that will lead directly to his doorstep...