4K UHD Review: Kino Lorber’s Le Doulos (KL Studio Classics) 

Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Doulos is another masterpiece of a crime thriller from the director.  Kino Lorber has released the highly influential and entertaining film on 4K UHD with a new Scan of the Original Camera Negative and loaded with extras.  

The Film 

It bears repeating the opening paragraph from my Bob le Flambeur review: 

There was no one that did it better than Jean-Pierre Melville.  His films were the epitome of cool.  Before Martin Scorsese.  Before Michael Mann.  Before John Woo.  Before Christopher Nolan. Before all the other stylists.  There was Melville.  A man who served in the French Resistance during WW2.  A man fascinated by storytelling and influenced by his time during the war and the honor (or lack thereof) between men.  The man who made Belmondo and Delon the icons of coolness they are today.  

Le Doulos is the kind of crime film where you may lose the narrative thread of multiple criminals and police officers all with various allegiances and motives in the haze of the quick give no answers style director Melville imbues into every frame of the film.  That’s alright.  That is part of the point.  The director adapting his complex screenplay from a novel by Pierre Lesou is the kind of clockwork precision that only reveals itself in the first ten minutes of the film.  Adding the wild card energy of Jean-Paul Belmondo to counterpoint the almost meek Serge Reggiani as the two criminals seemingly at odds with one another adds to the complexity of their amazing performances.  

Melville uses the idiom of “no honor amongst thieves” throughout his career and here is the inflection point where it all began.  The theme is buried so deep into the twisted narrative, a mystery itself, that one cannot truly appreciate what Melville’s film is doing until at least the second or third viewing.  No worry as any avid fan of crime fiction who hasn’t seen this momentous film will find it a meal they will not be able to digest in a single viewing.  Le Doulos a phrase with double meaning (the hat, and criminal informant), is made with the skill and purpose that the reckless criminals in this story do not possess.  Part of the beauty of the entire film is the tension that is wrung not only from the mystery of “why” all of this is happening but after the “why” is revealed. 

That tension and the “why” and post-“why” reveal are some of the best, groundbreaking criminal storytelling in film history.  So much so there are films that literally ape the format, but this reviewer won’t reveal them as it would give audiences that have not seen Le Doulos an indication of where the film heads.  Regardless of the twisted narrative, Le Doulos is an impressively mounted visually acute crime film that gives one an idea of what one is in store for when one takes on the oeuvre of Jean-Pierre Melville. 

The Transfer

The UHD SDR Master by StudioCanal – From a 4K Scan of the 35mm Original Camera Negative is a black and white marvel of image quality and what is possible with 4K UHD even if the mastering is done in Standard Dynamic.  The image is FLAWLESS – nary a scratch or issue with the source material.  Flawless in the way that the very best Black and White 4K UHD discs are with a clarity and even with a nice sheen of grain that makes the whole transfer feel almost three-dimensional.  This is an exemplary job of what is possible within the 4K format even without HDR encoding.

The Extras

They include the following;

• Audio Commentary by Film Historian Samm Deighan 
• Melville – The Demon Within Him  
• Birth of the Detective Story Melville Style  
• Theatrical Trailer

The Audio Commentary by Film Historian Samm Deighan opens with her bonafides and discussion of what Le Doulos means to the early career of Jean-Pierre Melville.  Some of the details include the opening credits and the importance of it and how you’ll want to return to after seeing this for the first time; the importance of hats and shadows in the film as a visual motif; the source material that Le Doulos was pulled from; the importance of this film as a thesis of Melville’s entire career; a discussion of the work of Jean-Pierre Melville here and throughout his career – including his time in the War and how it affect his work, the style and theme he concerns himself with, and more; the influence of crime novels series in France and on Melville; the work of Jean-Paul Belmondo – including a larger discussion of how Melville used him in his films, his work in crime films, and more; Melville’s work with female actors – a larger discussion of why and how he cast and worked with female actors; Melville’s discussion of him as an ‘amateur’ filmmaker; how the “commercial” film When You Read This Letter begat his freedom for other films like Le Doulos; Melville’s influence on modern filmmakers and the crime thriller; the lack of femme fatales in Melville’s work that is very much noir flavored crime films; the visual style of the film and how it relates to story, theme, and more; a larger discussion of the various other actors that appear in the film, their personal and professional histories; the odd sort of heralding of the future in Melville’s own words; and much more.  Deighan provides us with an illuminating commentary track that is both entertaining and informative deep dive into the world of Le Doulos and the creatives that made it.  

Melville – The Demon Within Him (29:34) – in this interview with First Assistant Director Volker Schlöndorff begins with how the AD and Melville were introduced.  Schlöndorff discusses what work was like under Melville – including his first daunting task of scheduling a script, and Melville’s dictum that the cheaper the movie the better the movie; the way that Melville worked and collaborated with Schlöndorff on budget and schedule to make the film work for economy of the budget; the lengths Melville went to ensure that the budget was used properly (and how strict he was to that mythology); the life that Melville lived; the strict rules he adhered to cinematically speaking; the filmmakers that inspired him; a discussion of Melville’s war record and other personal asides; and much more.   

Birth of the Detective Story Melville Style (32:46) – in this featurette the focus is on the various cast and crew that collaborated with director Jean-Pierre Melville and eventually becoming the architects of Melville’s filmic style – beginning with finding Le Doulos in a collection of shorts La Serie Norie, developed, and eventually made it into a feature film with Belmondo.  The making-of is a wonderful breakdown of the various parts of the production (beginning with the adaptation moving on to the casting/preproduction and eventually the postproduction) that ended up making the film so iconically a Melville film that would be the standard moving forward with all of his most iconic work.  In French with English Subtitles. 

Rounding out the special features are trailers for Le Doulos (2:25); Léon Morin, Priest (3:16); Bob Le Flambeur (3:39); Touchez Pas Au Grisbi (3:54); Razzia Sur La Chnouf (3:03); Alphaville (1:21)

The Final Thought 

Kino Lorber has treated Le Doulos with the respect it deserves.  The edition comes with a beautiful transfer and extras!  Highest possible recommendation!!! 

Kino Lorber’s 4K UHD Edition of Le Doulos is out now.