Hacker Cinema
Le Samouraï
1967 · Film · 105 min
Directed by Jean-Pierre Melville
After carrying out a flawlessly planned hit, Jef Costello, a contract killer with samurai instincts, finds himself caught between a persistent police investigator and a ruthless employer, and not even his armor of fedora and trench coat can protect him.
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3 comments on Hacker News
If you're wondering who this was: in the English-speaking world, he's probably most famous for Le Samourai, which was a great film and an influence on a host of other works, most recently being Drive. I really enjoyed Un flic too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuhPR3xeJm0
Noir: my favorite genre. Here's some color noirs I don't think have lost anything for not being in B&W: Leave Her to Heaven; Black Widow (1954); Blood Simple; Le Samouraï; Chinatown; Body Heat; Femme Fatale (2002); The Last Seduction; Thief (1981); Basic Instinct; After Dark, My Sweet.
My favorite noir however is indeed B&W: Detour (1945). To me it is the quintessential noir film.
Side note: I don't think 'cyberpunk' really described the work of William Gibson. A better term would have been cybernoir. Take a look at the work of French director Jean-Pierre Melville, or late 1940s American film noir. For example, many "Le Samourai" characters would fit right into a Gibson novel.
Maybe it fits a little in that the characters in Gibson novels were generally not the 'leaders of society' that featured so heavily in what is commonly called 'space opera' science fiction, and so his writing style was perhaps as revolutionary in the sci-fi genre at the time as punk was in the pop-music genre.