Le Samouraï (1967)
Melville's 1967 French crime film. Alain Delon as the hitman in trench coat and fedora.
François Périer worked in French cinema for six decades and is best known internationally as the police inspector pursuing Alain Delon in Le Samouraï.
Orpheus, for Jean Cocteau, gives him Heurtebise, a chauffeur who is also a dead man, and the performance carries the film’s dream logic.
Nights of Cabiria for Fellini gives him the man who betrays the protagonist in the closing scene, which is among the cruellest endings in Italian cinema.