Le Samouraï (1967)
Melville's 1967 French crime film. Alain Delon as the hitman in trench coat and fedora.
Alain Delon was among the biggest stars in French cinema for four decades and worked with Visconti, Melville and Antonioni. Le Samourai gives him a hitman whose apartment contains a caged bird and nothing else, and the performance is conducted almost entirely without expression. He also produced many of his own films and was a genuinely controversial public figure in France until his death in 2024.