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11 out of 11 people found the following comment useful :- The Second Chance of a Desperate Man, 12 January 2007 Author: mackjay2 from Out There in the Dark
*** This comment may contain spoilers ***
Painstaking detail and near-real-time narrative pace characterize THE SECOND BREATH (WIND). This is another in Melville's series of caper films in which the viewer is shown the entire process of planning and executing the crime. But, like the director's other fine films, this one is also about the characters. Most of the detail is used to bring insight into these desperate men, especially the main protagonist. On several occasions, Melville has given us a nearly washed-up criminal as a main character and here we are given one of the hardest-boiled examples: Gustave "Gu" Minda (Lino Ventura). At the film's outset, Gu escapes from prison and turns violently on one of his fellow escapees. This sets the tone for the entire narrative of distrust and double-crossing. Gu is interesting to us, but not truly sympathetic. Desperate for his 'second wind', Gu plans to accumulate enough money to leave France, preferably with his mistress, and avoid re-capture. When a fellow crime-boss offers him a part in his latest robbery caper, Gu takes him up. The film alternates between Gu and Commissaire Blot (Paul Meurisse) the police chief who is as committed to capturing Gu as Gu is to escaping. We need not be too concerned with the final outcome: it's pretty clear what it will be. Gu is ultimately a pathetic man, a sort of 'tragic criminal' whose fall from power leaves him disillusioned and worthless. This is one of Melville's more violent tales. To achieve his ends, Gu does not shy away from cold-blooded murder in more than one scene. A latter-day Film Noir in which fate plays a major role, it's not Melville's best film, but it deserves to be seen by anyone interested in this director.
7 out of 9 people found the following comment useful :- not bad at all, actually very good and meticulously structured heist movie, but not great, 12 November 2008 Author: MisterWhiplash from United States
I had seen nearly everything that is readily available from Jean-Pierre Melville in the United States by the time I got to Le Deuxieme soufflé, which may be part of why I didn't respond overwhelmingly to it. After such challenging, methodical and precisely existential crime masterpieces as Le Samourai, Le Cercle Rouge, Bob le flambeur and the underrated Le Doulos, this one just seemed to not pack the same kind of punch that the others did. Again, this may be the fault on the viewer for seeing this last among his mostly thriller-oriented oeuvre, but perhaps it's also some of Melville's fault too; again and again, as the dedicated and ruthless auteur that he was (one of the great French directors I would argue), he kept coming back to men in trench-coats with grim expressions figuring out on both sides- criminal and detective- of how to plot the next move or, for the former, how to keep from the fatalism of the plot.Which, for Melville, is something that comes second nature. The difference, perhaps, in this case is that the length (a whopping two and a half hours, longer than both The Red Circle and Army of Shadows) and the amount of details in the structure of the story (i.e. what happened on such and such a day made this happened could've been snipped, albeit I can't pinpoint to which) bog down some of the more successful aspects to the picture. Which is also to say that for all of its minor misgivings, Le Deuxieme soufflé (or, simply, The Second Breath) is near-classic Melville, with nail-bitingly tense suspense scenes like the opening escape from the prison and the latter heist sequence- somewhat more obvious and less coolly ambitious as Red Circle.There's the amazing cinematography as well, a trademark of Melville and his crew to make things gritty but smooth in precision and style, and the performances from Paul Meurisse as the Detective (maybe my favorite performance of the picture just for the intelligence he imbues in the character), and Lino Ventura as one of the quintessential Melville anti-heroes, Gu, the convict who wants in on the big 200 million heist. And even as it could be Melville's most "talky" picture after Bob le flambeur (which is relative to how pleasantly light, or how seemingly sparse, his films are with dialog), when the characters speak it's to the point of with some quotable spunk to them.There's an icy, unspoken angst in Melville's world of criminals, almost questioning but still true to the notion of the 'policier', where you'd want the criminals to get away with it if the detective wasn't so doggone determined all the time. It's another fine piece of film-making from the director, just not an all-time-top flick - more along the lines of Un flic. 8.5/10
3 out of 3 people found the following comment useful :- Another of Melville's existential thugs struggling with the Code, and with 144 minutes to do it in, 8 November 2008 Author: Terrell-4 from San Antonio, Texas
Nearly two-and-a-half hours is a long, long time in the movies, especially so when Jean- Pierre Melville is once more demonstrating his passion for hard boiled gangsters. With Le Deuxieme Soufflé (Second Breath), it seems to me that Melville has given us some extraordinary set pieces of heists, shoot-outs and chases...including one roll-along-the-floor while-shooting-a-gun-in-each-hand and-plugging-all-the-guys-who were-going-to-plug-you that now has become a pretty-boy-actor-as-tough-guy cliché. They are embedded, however, in an over-long story featuring yet one more of Melville's existential heroes that he came to obsess about. Melville underlines it all with his stoic gangster code of conduct, illustrated by the pretentious words that start this movie: "A man is given but one right at birth: To choose his own death. But if he chooses because he's weary of life, then his entire existence has been without meaning." Let me tell you something...nothing, nothing will go right as long as Gu Minda, cold-blooded murderer with a soft spot for Manouche, believes his buddies think he ratted them out. The Code won't permit it. Is this to deny that Melville was a great director? Hardly, but it is to recognize that Melville was human: He didn't always make great movies; his preoccupation with gangsters and their fictitious code of conduct was limiting; his indulgence in what passes as "style" in the gangster milieu could appear, in my opinion, downright silly; and as a screenwriter he was capable of some corny gangster dialogue (or at least he was ill-served at times by the subtitle writers). With all this, the director who could give us Army of Shadows, with its terrible themes, its remorselessness and its humanity, is a great director. The director who could give us Bob le Flambeur, with its irony, its humanity and its tight, story-telling prowess, is a great director with a sense of humor. Watch Army of Shadows and Bob le Flambeur (and Le Cercle Rouge) first, then Le Deuxieme Soufflé and Le Samourai...and come to your own conclusions. The devil of it with Le Deuxieme Soufflé is that great stretches of the movie are gripping, Lino Ventura (with that hard, tired face) and Paul Meurisse are first- rate and Melville never lets us have less than a superbly presented series of scenes. But, in my opinion, his series of scenes, some lengthy, don't add up to a tightly realized movie, especially at over two-and-a-half hours. Gu Minda (Lino Ventura) is a cop-killing gangster who has just broken out of prison. Gangsters he knows have been moving in on his turf. Two hoods threaten Manouche, his long-time girl friend (Christine Fabrega), in her apartment. Gu intervenes, and with a friend drives the hoods to the country. Gu guns them down in the car. Inspector Blot is after Gu. Blot is resourceful and relentless. Gu has no money. He's determined on one last heist with a big payday before he and Manouche flee France. Inspector Blot will not make things easy. When Gu realizes his honor has been compromised, he won't leave France until he sets things straight. Don't expect a happy ending. With Melville's code of the existential gangster, there never is. While the plot is simple, Melville embellishes it with any number of twists and turns, sneaky actions, a coincidence or two and some satisfying betrayals, plus a long, extremely well-done set piece on how to hi-jack a van full of platinum. In this gangster movie there is no gangster arm candy, only Manouche. Fabrega was 35 when the movie was released. Lino Ventura was 47. Through the alchemy of genes and make-up, they make their characters about same age. Fabrega looks her years and is all the more believable because of this desirable maturity. She gives to Gu what little sympathy we have for him. It would be difficult to say -- between Ventura with Gu's grim, murderous honor and Meurisse with Blot's sardonic realism and intelligence -- who gives the film more interest. It might depend on your tolerance for thug killers who agonize about their reputations.
3 out of 4 people found the following comment useful :- An Exercise In Style That Transcends That Status, 19 February 2009 Author: jzappa from United States
Why do I always care about thieves in heist films, no matter how bad they are? As is common in Jean-Pierre Melville's later films, this meticulously crafted crime film opens with a title card that epigrammatically sets out a foreboding epigram that molds ostensible meaning into the action: "A man is given but one right at birth: to choose his own death. But if he chooses because he's weary of his own life, then his entire existence has been without meaning." It's invariably inhibiting to totally apply these fatalistic, existential aphorisms to the films that thus proceed, but they tend to cast a distinct outlook across the film. I'm not so sure that this slow, deliberate caper, or any of Melville's others for that matter, seeks all of the indications of this quote, but its pretext of fate, mortality and grim, solipsistic judgment corresponds with the essential themes of the film.Like Le Cercle Rouge, Le Deuxième Soufflé is a nominal saga, an antithetical and composite film in which the life seems as if to impose and simultaneously exhale. Ventura's performance is both innate and disciplined by his claustrophobic settings. There are several instances set within moving cars, less to expand the atmosphere than to show the inhibition of the space they employ.What frustrates and somewhat detaches me however is that Melville never seems to give his characters any involved cognitive measure. They're characterized and assessed by the black and white of their behavior. Gu is a ruthless, intractable and curtailed presence who gains recognition, even from Inspector Blot, another wonderfully named character, played by Paul Meurisse, who respects his deadly actions because he eventually complies with and doesn't veer from his dang "code."Much of this 1966 cops-and-robbers film can be explained just in terms of its distilled preoccupation with the reference to the conventions regarding the treatment of Chandler, McBain, W.R. Burnett, Jim Thompson, stylish Hollywood crime dramas, and classic American gangster pictures. Melville's films in this mode have the element of photogenics, conformity to modern ideas and models nourished by a shadowy nonchalance and the characters' affectedly memorialized mannerisms. For instance when a dutiful thug prepares to meet the other gang members, casing the place first, but also anticipating the blanket preconditions of the scene. This dogmatic behavior underscores the salutary definitions of these characters, their movements having a textbook role. You can also see Melville's influence on Tarantino's Jackie Brown when the thug is dramatically pre-performing the differing poses of the impending standoff. Also, it's not until Gu changes into clothing more mindfully echoing that of a gangster that he is allowed to free himself from being so secretive and concealed.The sullen, inflamed and exceedingly conventionalized quality of this typified film conveys Melville's immersion in the downbeat deliberation of the play of loyalty and destined disloyalty. With this transcendent crime film, as per Melville's usual, complete with another great title, Second Wind, Melville pushes the tonal qualities and gray scale of the image to new levels. The movie's preoccupation with issues of fellowship, abnormally all-consuming professionalism, silence, and duplicity reverberates with Melville's own distinction as an egocentric, tight-lipped, fringe-dwelling figure in French cinema, who despite his success never truly declared participation or involvement in any founded generation or evolution of filmmakers.
1 out of 1 people found the following comment useful :- Very well written and played--this one is a thinking person's crime film, 24 January 2009 Author: planktonrules from Bradenton, Florida
"Le Deuxième Soufflé" is an excellent crime film--mostly because it emphasizes realism as opposed to sensationalism. Now this isn't to say the film isn't exciting, but it certainly is one that has a much slower pace than usual and excessive attention is paid to the details--so much that you'd swear this is almost a crime documentary instead of fiction.The film begins with a daring breakout from prison. Gustave 'Gu' Minda is lucky and makes it over the wall safely. It turns out he was #1 on France's most wanted list ten years earlier and so naturally it makes quite a sensation when he escapes. The first half of the movie have a lot to do with his escape and his life in hiding. However, despite hiding, he does have a few adventures along the way that I won't elaborate on because it would spoil the suspense.A bit later, while waiting for a way out of the country, Gu is a bit bored and jumps at a chance to pull one last job--a very, very BIG job where 800,000,000 francs worth of platinum is on the line. Once the job has been completed, though, the film is far from over and the police naturally are combing the country for Gu and the money--though they really don't know if he had anything to do with it or who his accomplices are.Now there is one minor detail about the film I didn't like. While Gu has changed his appearance and relocated from Paris to Marseilles, he sure seemed pretty out of character late in the film. Despite being such a brilliant and careful prisoner, he takes walks about the city! Why? Well, I have no idea and it's not surprising that he's finally caught. However, once again, there is much more to this 150 minute film--a lot of twists and turns that occur because Gu, though generally amoral, will do anything to convince his fellow criminals that he has a strong sense of honor and integrity. I liked this because it did give him some depth and the finale was indeed exciting.The film is very much like a French version of Film Noir. In general, the French did their Noir a bit later than Hollywood and this continued through the 1960s--after Hollywood had gone on to other things. Making this film in black and white was a great choice, as it heightened the Noir look and it as well as "Bob le Flambeur" and "Le Samourai" are among the best in this French genre. Not to be missed.
14 out of 91 people found the following comment useful :- Dull with some good bits, 24 July 2003 Author: StevieGB from London, England
I saw this at London's National Film Theatre last night and I must admit to being more than a little bit disappointed. This appears to mark the turning point where Melville lost all real interest in character (after the wonderful Le Doulos and the underrated L'Aine Des Ferchaux) and turned his attention to set piece robberies and shoot outs. The problem is, that this is still a long and wordy script, with an awful lot of very pointless talk, connecting up some visually excellent scenes. The highlight of the film, the hijack of an armoured car on a deserted mountain road, foreshadows the action techniques -shaky camerawork, fast cutting - used by Ridley Scott in Black Hawk Down, Gladiator and Hannibal; unfortunately it's over in seconds. There are other great scenes, but dramatically they lead nowhere. For example, one gangster scouts the site of an intended meeting, works out where he might be standing when there's trouble, and hides a gun nearby. When he leaves, an adversary comes into the room, goes through the same thought processes, and finds and removes the gun. But the scene never pays off, as the first gangster never ends up reaching for the missing weapon. Performance wise two people stand out - Paul Meurisse as the compassionate, intelligent and very, very funny Inspector Blot, and Pierre Zimmer as Orloff, the gangster who serves as the moral touchstone for his peers.About three quarters of the way through the film turns from an escaped convict and heist movie into the story of a man trying to prove that he hasn't been a police informer/collaborator. As with a lot of Melville's gangster vs police movies (a big favourite with the French) you can't help feeling that he's really dealing with the issue of wartime resistance to the German occupation. To my mind, though, Melville seems more interested in shoring up the myth of resistance rather than dealing with the truth (as Louis Malle tried to in Lacombe, Lucien, resulting in his effective exile from France for the rest of his life).The scene where Paul is interrogated by the police was apparently edited at the insistence of France's censors to remove the scenes of water being poured down his throat. What remains is a very obviously edited scene which doesn't work.Anyway, not an awful movie, but a messy one. Can't help feeling that maybe Melville got interested in something else and couldn't be bothered to finish it properly.Fell asleep twice.
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