Le Samouraï

Le Samouraï (French pronunciation: [lə samuʁaj]; The Samurai) is a 1967 French crime film directed by French filmmaker Jean-Pierre Melville, starring Alain Delon. The story follows a perfectionist free-agent hitman, Jef Costello (Delon), who religiously adheres to a strict code of duty. He lives in a spartan apartment whose interior contains a neatly arranged line of mineral water bottles, cigarettes on a bookcase, as well as a little bird in a grey cage in the middle of the room. He is taciturn and goes about his tasks like clockwork. The film opens with a fairly long take of the protagonist lying awake on his bed, smoking, when the following text appears on-screen, attributed to an ancient samurai writing entitled Bushido (Book of the...