After Jef kills his employer, he goes to the nightclub and tell the pianist that he is going to kill her becuase he is being paid for.
But didn't he kill his employer?How is he going to be paid?Did I get all wrong or missed something?
Please, someone explain to me what happened.
shareWhen he enters the nightclub for the last time, it is no longer about being paid for his hitman duties, in fact he has no intention of killing her. He knows his time is up. He makes no attempt at securing an alibi with Jane and reveals his identity by making a big deal of cloaking his hat. If you view this scene in contrast to his first killing in the film, you can see the reversals of his actions. He sets himself up by looking like he is going to kill her in the middle of the nightclub but at the end the police commissioner reveals that he was holding an empty gun. It can be read that he has fallen for the singer and realised the emptiness of his life and knows his time is up. Hope that helps!
shareI think I should watch the film again now, but anyway, thanks for giving me a whole new perspective on the film.
share[deleted]
I assume that he was supposed to kill the nightclub singer, but couldn't (for whatever personal reasons). Since that wouldn't have been "honorable" or against his "master's" wishes, he chose to let himself get killed. I died doing his job like a samurai would have done.
shareI proposed this in another thread, but will condense it here, as it really is the only explanation that satisfies me:
The contract that Jef receives from the blonde guy was for.....himself.
Valerie, the piano player, was behind both contracts (the room she meets Jef in is the same one where Jef returns to kill Rey). As Jef follows the Samurai code, he must comply with the second contract and kill himself. He does so in front of Valerie to show her his honour/fearlessness/etc.
I don't necessarily think he was contracted to kill himself. He was probably contracted to kill Valerie. Recall that the murder was supposed to be clean without a trail. Jef doesn't betray his alibi, he maintains he is innocent and he is difficult to break. Rey trusts him. But Valerie is also in it. I was trying to figure out who Rey was and what his motives were. Perhaps the owner of a rival club? Perhaps he gets the club if Martey dies? He sees that Jef is difficult to break down, but what about Valerie? Will she squeal? The solution is to kill her. But Jef couldn't do that. She saved him once so he cannot kill her. He cannot just abandon his mission like that, he must die if he were to abandon the mission. I took the ending to be a sort of hara-kiri.
«mr. gandhi, what do you think of western civilisation?»
«i think it's a great idea »
The only problem I have with Jef committing a seppuku of sorts to avoid killing Valerie is that if someone wants Valerie dead, Jef's death doesn't mean she is necessarily safe. It only means that she won't die THEN. Assuming that Jef's employers want her dead, they'll just get someone else to do it. So it's kind of a half-assed way of saving her if Jef died to avoid killing her.
The theory that he accepted a contract on himself is also problematic - who the hell would do that? A samurai would commit seppuku at his master's orders, but he wouldn't act out against his master. Jef beats and ties up the man who attempted to kill him, so it is safe to assume that IF Jef is to be viewed as a samurai, then we can conclude that he does not view this man as his master, or even an associate of his master, because no samurai would lash out against his master and expect to retain honor. So if we can conclude that he was not receiving contracts from his master, then he would have no reason to accept a contract on himself - only his master has the authority to order Jef's seppuku.
This begs the question: who is Jef's master? Does he have a master? If Jef is masterless, he can choose his contracts and continue to live by the moral/ethical code of the samurai out of a personal sense of honor. But if this is true, then they should have called the film "Le Rounin!" In 1967 the distinction between a masterless Ronin and an employed Samurai may not have been made in Western culture, so this may explain the title - regardless, there is no conclusive evidence that Jef has a master, given his isolation and loner persona.
I did not think about that till you pointed it out.
shareI always thought that he couldn't kill the singer. Not that he was trying to save her (which his dying obviously would NOT do) but that he couldn't be the one to kill her. Lets say that he was contracted to kill her, the only exceptable way for a Samurai to leave a mission incomplete is to die. So, in the end he doesn't kill the singer and he dies like a Samurai.
But, now you guys are bringing out some very interesting points which is making me reevaluate the ending.
EDIT: Just to clarify, I do think Jef is more of a Ronin than a Samurai.
It seems to me that to him, technically speaking his employer was the blond guy, whom he did not kill. Loyalty to his employer demanded that he carry out the contract on the piano player, which he could only do honorably by accepting his fate and walking into the setup. It is easier to see in 'Ghost Dog' -- the girl in both movies (the piano player here, the chief gangster's daughter in 'Ghost Dog') was a witness to his work, as well as to his code of honor.
shareI don't know how necessary it is to hold Jef to strict samurai code. I think he just thinks of himself as a solitary person, which seems to be required by his line of work. By the end of the film, though, he realizes that in spite of his carefulness***, he does have personal connections and sees the danger he's bringing to the people who have helped him. We're led to beleive things are getting too hot for his prep man and he sees how far Jane is willing to go to protect him, which elicits the closest thing to an emotion we see from him (aside from the exception of his obvious fear of getting nabbed as he's stealing the second car).
I'm not so sure how he feels about the piano player. He was already wary of her motives for lying to the police - he must have been doubly doubtful of her once he saw she was living with the man he'd come to kill.
***Every description I've seen of this film describes Jef as a perfectionist, but WHY was he SO SLOPPY on this job. He couldn't have at least changed his coat and hat? I was dumbfounded when he picked them up off the bed. It wasn't like the cops were picking people up based on their wearing a hat and trechcoat - they'd asked him to come with them without seeing him in them.
Just to answer the last part, no Parisian man of the time would have left without a hat and coat, and the other men in the room wouldn't have let him walk out with theirs. Actually, he would have looked more suspicious if he did anything BUT take his stuff with him when he left. As for changing them, I'm not sure he had time between the hit and the poker game.
His hat and coat were integral to his alibi. Mr. Wiener saw a man leaving Jane's apartment wearing that hat and coat. He identified the man he saw as a composite of the hat, the coat, and the face of the man wearing neither (after the police made Jef switch clothing with others).
shareLe Samouraï (Melville, 1967): doomed tale of a romantic lone wolf:
http://www.cinemapsychologia.com/2010/02/le-samourai-melville-1967-doo med-tale.html
Thoughts in point form:
- The lone wolf chose his fate, and knew this
- Macho independence is a self-centered creation
- He was not as alone as he thought: without those who helped him with his alibi and his disguise, he would not be where he was.
- The importance of women in his life: a protector, and an angel of death, sometimes both in the same person (the pianist)
- Extreme take on the idea that we are all alone in this world - very existentialistic, and fatalistic
- Death projection: man carries within him his death sentence, and Jef was walking towards it, knowingly
- Caged bird and hit man: only truly 'free' when dead
- Repetitions and the draining of colour: ritualistic, dream-like existence
- Note: the 'proverb' was actually Melville's creation, and not from any Samurai book.
Actually, Jef no longer has to worry about Olivier Rey--he has already killed him. Valerie should be safe, no matter what his motives.
"The Mountain Has Wings"
his master seems to be himself. he's a lone samurai in a modern world, engulfed by the world when he steps out of his element. his ascetic code and honor are what he values most, and he stays true to them in death by being loyal to the lady who helped him (he's indebted)
shareLook--
Jeff killed the man, Rey, who put a contract on the pianist, so she *was* safe. He took the money for the second contract, killed the man who gave it to him (Rey), which rendered him unable to back out of the contract. He also, perhaps, had fallen for the pianist. In one ending he dies with a smile on his face, but this was edited out because the actor playing Jef had died with a smile on his face in another film.
What Delon film was that?
shareawesome... "Ronin", thank you. Good explanation.
shareI prefer the interpretation that Jef realized his life had ceased to make sense and was, in fact, empty. He had feelings for the piano player, and also his death would get the police off of Jane's back. I don't think he cares all that much about his master/employer...I mean, he shoots the guy in cold blood.
SPOILERS!!! SPOILERS!!!
It's kinda like Hartigan in Sin City when he kills himself. An old man dies, a girl gets to live. For Jef, it was "a man past his time dies, a girl lives." He decided it wasn't worth it anymore in the end.
Spider-Man 3 is superior in every way to Funny Games.
As a Samourai, he pretty much commits ritual suicide. This is symbolic.
I agree that the second contract was probably for the pianist, although it is a contract which he has no intention of fulfilling. I think basically at the end he does commit a form of suicide. He must be pretty sure that the police will have people at the club, given how closely he has been followed etc, and that pointing a gun at someone is going to provoke a response from them. He wants to be killed, both as an escape from life and as an escape from the contract he accepted.
shareAlso, it's clear that he intends to either kill himself or be caught after this second assignment when he checks something at the front desk and then deliberately puts on his gloves right in front of the bartender. He is making sure he is seen. Quite a contrast from the beginning of the movie when he was furtive, and going to such great lengths NOT to be seen by the people in the bar when he goes for his kill.
share[deleted]
I agree that he had no intention of killing the nightclub singer, but I don't think that it's because he has fallen for her. On the contrary, I think he is in love with the girl that provided him with an alibi and since his mistakes have caused her to be threatened by the police, he commits honorable suicide in order to protect her.
shareGreat movie! I've always been a Delon fan, and I was a little mystified by the ending also. Thanks for the explanation bealukas!
Well Jef is tying up the loose ends. He kills the men who hired him to murder the club owner. The reason the piano player doesn't rat him out is because she is the girlfriend of the head guy who ordered the hit. The last step is to kill the piano player because she is the only one left that can link him to the crime, but he can't go through with it because he is in love with her. He chooses death rather than go on living his empty life, especially with the cops closing in on him anyway.
shareis the fact that you never see Jef unload his revolver. I couldn't figure out if it was a continuity error or what. I do realize though that Melville was not concerned with making the film realistic.
"Stupid friends are dangerous"
Yes you do. He pulls his car up in front of the night club and takes his gun out and opens the barrel. Then it cuts to the next scene. The last scene of the film the detective takes opens the chamber on Jeff's gun and reveals there were no bullets. So you can guess that Jeff emptied out the bullets in the car before he went inside the club.
shareWhen I saw it, I assumed he was checking to see if he had all 6 rounds in the cylinder. But now I understand that if they showed him unload it, the ending would not have been as effective.
"Stupid friends are dangerous"
just watched this on dvd, and thought it was very cool in that 60s style.
The blonde guy paid 2,000,000 for the first hit, and another 2,000,000 for the next. When Jef confronted the Boss, the boss asked him if he accepted the new contract, and told him he shouldn't be there, so it was obviously not a contract for the boss. I think you have to assume it was a contract to kill the pianist.
At the club, he takes the bullets out in the car (off camera). He and the pianist are obviously atrracted to each other. When he goes up to her, she tells him not to stay there. I think it was a setup with the cops being there ready to shoot him, presumably she knew they were there. The question is did the Boss call the cops or did Jef somehow let them know himself.
Other issues: I think he was helping get his girlfriend out of trouble by allowing himself to get killed.
When he goes the the Boss's apartment, he opens a door and sees it is the pianist's apartment. He looked a bit surprised, althiugh we knew because she had earlier walked in the hallway with the paintings on the wall.
Also in the commentary on the dvd, an author friend of the writer/director said that Melville had wanted Delon to die with a smile on his face, but when he heard that Delon had already done that in another movie, he changed the ending.
Just for the records: The movie where Delon dies with a smile is "Les Aventuriers". Probably one of the best and most moving death scenes ever seen on screen! Certainly Delon's best!
Cheers,
[deleted]
The ending has nothing to do with bushido or seppuku. He killed his employer/master. If he had followed bushido, he would rather have killed himself instead. But he is no samurai. He is an assasin. Yet he chooses his own death, and that can be seen as a post-sengoku bushido value. What is more interesting about that fact, though, is that he won the game of cat and mouse with the police. Sure they caught and killed him. But on his own terms.
shareIt must be recognised that although many people associate Jeff to being like a Samourai, a Samourai would never kill for money, but instead would only kill for honour and duty thus underlining that he is an assasin and not a Samourai.
share[deleted]
Jef does what he is paid to do. He is in reality his own master, loyal to himself. The second contract was no doubt for the piano player, or possibly even both the piano player and the boss that he kills in the house. The point is that Jef must go through with the contract because he was paid to. He completes the hit on the man, or simply kills him for revenge, and then goes to take out the piano player, but he knows he cannot. So he empties his gun before entering, and then puts on his gloves in front of the worker so that they can see him, then pulls the gun on the piano player and just stands there waiting for the cops to shoot him.
If the man who he kills in the house is the one who ordered the hit on the piano player, perhaps he kills him as a precaution feeling that this will keep the piano player safe now. Either way, he cannot kill the piano player, and cannot betray the contract, so he commits suicide by cops.
Whatever the answer, it's a great ending. Great movie.
When he confronts Rey, Jef seems to take his hands out of his pockets, and they're empty, but immediately Rey turns on Jef with a gun, and Jef now has a gun and shoots first. I watched it several times to make sure I saw it right, and I'm still confused. Anyone see the same thing?
shareThat's Melville's brillant, surprising approach in the action sequences. It's supposed to catch you off guard.
shareGoing back to what was said earlier, someone said that Jef getting himself killed in the club wouldn't save Valerie, it may have brought her attention to the fact that she was in danger. Otherwise, why didn't he just shoot himself in the head at home?
Lyle, wherever you're going, you'll still be there.
Although I won't posit my own idea of the "correct" interpretation, I think there are a few points here that line up nicely. Throughout the movie I was thinking that the title should have maybe been "Le Rounin," as it is quite apparent that he has no formal master. I subscribe to the idea that he does follow Bushido. Therefore he can have no master. I think the difference between calling him a ronin and an assasin is very minor compared to calling him a samurai. Someone earlier in further up the page here mentioned something about the idea of ronin not having been yet introduced in the West, and I completely disagree. Japanese Samurai films were very popular in the west and I'm sure by 1967 Melville had seen his fair share. However, in terms of marketing, which plays a bigger role in these sorts of things than we often think, "Le Samouraï" is an immensly more attractive title that "Le Rounin."
I just saw this movie for the first time and disagree with what has been said about the gun in the end. As I recall it, we see him in the car load his gun and check the bullets. He does not empty them. We never see that, if memory serves me well. The bullets are gone froom his gun the same way the gun is magically in his hands when he kills Rey and the same way he manages to get away from his first meeting with the Blond guy with only a mark on his arm and the other guy's gun. It's a mystery that adds to the intrigue of Jef.
In terms of the master-seppuku-etc. debate, I have not heard a satisfactory answer yet here and certainly don't claim ot have the best one, but here are some thoughts. It seems fairly certain to me that, due to his honor and code, he cannot kill Valerie. Another idea about his master, though, is that after That blond guy was sent to kill him (his master disowning him, so to speak,) he was able to sever ties with the master and took the second contract only in order to get closer to Rey and exact his revenge. After that point, he had already ensured Jane's safety and had only to protect Valerie. By killing Rey, he had done already quite a good service for Valerie and as somebody mentioned before, his death was possibly to warn her, since he had called her before and she didn't pick up. In terms of him commiting Seppuku, it seems to me that it was indeed a ritual suicide. Samurai very regularly commited Seppuku in the face of defeat and the approaching enemy. He knows he will eventually get killed, so he takes his own life, thereby maintaining his honor.
Apologize for the length,
-J
Definitely, MacAindrais' answer is the most accurate described here. Le Samourai is all about rituals. The way Delon checks his hat in the mirror every time he leaves his apartment, the way he sorts through his key set to find the correct one, the way he takes his car back to the same garage for the plates to be changed, etc... When he gets the last contract, it is to kill the piano player but the reason he does not shoot her is not because he is in love with her (Jef didn't even seem to love his own fiance in the film) or because he wants to find meaning in his poor empty life, but because she did not reveal his identity to the police and for that he must repay that debt to her. He wanted to live his life by these rituals and honors and accepting a contract meant it must be carried out, even if it meant his own death.
shareYes, we see Jef in the car before entering the nightclub. He opens the barrel of his gun and all 6 bullets are present before the camera cuts away. As someone already said, showing him remove the bullets would make the ending less of a surprise, so it's simply implied. Not that difficult to understand.
And if you watch closely during both assasination scenes-- first with the nightclub owner, then with Jef's employer-- you'll notice they are very similarly choreographed: Jef's hands go into his coat pockets and come out empty; the camera cuts to his adversary, who pulls a gun, then cuts quickly back to Jef who fires his own weapon first, seemingly defying the laws of physics. It's a curious nuance that's discussed in one of the interviews on the Criterion Collection version.
Also, I think there's a bit of humor in the concluding events of the film. An entire police force is dispatched to trail Jef and he outwits all of them. The final scene obviously has hara-kiri undertones, but it also seems to be Jef's final "kiss my ass" to the police. He knows he's backed into a corner, so he lets the police finish him off. One officer remarks to the piano player that they saved her life, until another officer reveals the empty barrel of the pistol. Like someone said, it's Jef's way of saying that he dies on his own terms.
you got it all wrong people.
You need to watch it again. The piano player lived in the same house as the Boss, they were probably in a relationship together. The contract was for the Piano Player because the Boss found out that she liked him. Thats why the Boss was being so unreasonable when the other "thug" was explaining how great and reliable Jef was, but the Boss kept insisting to get rid of him. When that failed, the Boss decided to use him to kill the piano player because of his own jealousy. Jef figured that out from the Blonde Guy. So he ended up killing the Boss so that he couldnt have her killed. Then he had to commit a "hara-kiri" because he was now masterless and the cops were coming down on him.
There small scene before he enters the club, in which he is scene opening his gun to check the revolver. The scene cuts to him walking in the bar, so we can assume he was making sure it was empty before going inside.
shareMelville wanted to show that Jef was a schizophrenic (spelling) during an interview. Therefore, Costello wanted his end to look like the tragic fall of a hitman to give that appropriate end to himself as an assassin.
shareBut didn't he kill his employer?"
Yes
"How is he going to be paid?"
He got paid before (in his apartment). But money does not matter here. He was a dead man and he knew it. The Police would get him in the end. There was only one way out, death. But first he had to take his revenge.
- This comment is most likely authentic and fairly close to what I intended to say -
This is my understanding of the ending. Jef gets contracted to kill the girl, because she knows too much. Jef doesn't want to kill the girl, he is also mad at Rey for trying to have him killed after he got picked up. Jef kills Rey to keep the girl safe from future harm, and because of the hit attempt on himself. With Rey dead, Jef has now betrayed his actual employers, which are the middle men who hook him up to people like Rey who are in need of his services. If one of their hitmen kills a client it makes them look bad. They will be out to kill Jef. The Police are also out for Costello. With his employers and the cops after him he has no allies whatsoever. He knows he is either dead or caught by the Paris cops. By allowing himself to be killed for failing the job he has taken money for he keeps his honor and gets to end things on his own terms.
shareHe is the Samurai, not the tiger in the jungle
shareSo much silliness in this thread.
1. Yes, he killed his employer, who was her boyfriend. Presumably if Jeff hadn't killed him he would have hired someone else to kill her.
2. He was paid in advance in his apartment by the blond man.
The problem that I have with the ending is that Jef's actions pretty much seal Jane's fate as an accessory to the first murder. I thought he loved her, but he really kind of threw her under the bus there.
Regardless, I loved this film.
After Jef kills his employer, he goes to the nightclub and tell the pianist that he is going to kill her because he is being paid for.
But didn't he kill his employer?How is he going to be paid?Did I get all wrong or missed something?
There obviously is a symbolic & philosophic meaning to the ending. Many people here have described it already so i am not going into that again.
To answer your question very simply, he was paid in advance. Remember the guy who broke into his home & pointed a gun at his face. In that scene he talks about a new job for Jef. Gives him Two Million Old Francs & says "Payable in advance this time". So basically he was already paid for.
Or is it a set up.
shareJef knew that the Police and possibly another hitman would get him sooner or later so he decided he wanted out. He proceeded to "kill" Valeria in full view of others knowing full well the police might take him out.
The only downer with this film is the sloppiness that Jef engages in for someone who is supposedly meticulous.
I'm not sure what I think was happening...all of these are interesting points (tho I don't know where someone concluded that the piano player was anyone's girlfriend).
But I don't necessarily believe he intended to die. Maybe that's just me. I'm giving it a second viewing.