Jean-Pierre Melville directed Le Deuxieme Souffle (“Second Wind”), a crime thriller based on the novel Le deuxième by José Giovanni, starring Lino Ventura, Paul Meurisse, Raymond Pellegrin, and Christine Fabréga.
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Incarcerated gangster Gustave “Gu” Minda escapes from prison and heads for Paris to see his sister Manouche and her faithful bodyguard Alban.
While he is traveling, Manouche’s current boyfriend, Jacques Ribaldi, who is competing with the Marseille-based gangster and nightclub owner Paul Ricci in the illicit cigarette trade, is shot dead in Manouche’s restaurant by some of Paul’s henchmen.
Paul’s dishonorable brother Jo, who owns a bar in Paris, sends two men to Manouche’s house to extort money from her, but Gu executes them while in a moving car.
Commissaire Blot sets out to solve both cases and catch Gu using a combination of manipulation and patience.
Gu follows Manouche to Marseille, planning to flee to Italy on her cousin’s boat once Gu gets a fake passport.
Gu, Paul, Pascal Léonetti, and young Antoine Ripa set out to rob a security van transporting a ton of platinum from Toulon to Cadarache. On a remote mountain road, Antoine and Gu shoot and kill the two police officers escorting the shipment, and the team ties up the other guards and gets away with the loot. Gu goes into hiding while he waits for the platinum to be converted into cash, but he is spotted and tricked into revealing Paul’s involvement in the heist while being recorded by Blot, who had suspected Gu’s involvement and discovered the same gun used to kill the two men who tried to extort Manouche was used to kill one of the motorcycle police officers.
Commissaire Fardiano of the Marseille police arrests and tortures Gu and Paul, but neither says anything. Gu is racked with guilt for having implicated Paul, and when he is shown a newspaper article that says he informed, he punches his hands through a window and bashes his head against a file cabinet, which gets him sent to the hospital.
Orloff is with Manouche when Gu returns, and he tells Gu to escape right away, as Blot is in town.
Gu fires at the police and is shot by Godefroy, one of Blot’s detectives. Blot lets Manouche past a barricade, lying to her that Gu did not have any final words.
The film was released in France in November 1966, scoring 1,912,749 admissions, thus making it Melville’s highest grossing film to date.
In 2007, Alain Corneau remade Le deuxième souffle with Daniel Auteuil, Michel Blanc, and Jacques Dutronc.
Cast
Lino Ventura as Gustave “Gu” Minda
Paul Meurisse as Commissaire Blot of Paris
Raymond Pellegrin as Paul Ricci, Jo’s brother
Christine Fabréga as Simone “Manouche” (“Gypsy”) Pelquier
Marcel Bozzuffi as Jo Ricci, Paul’s brother
Paul Frankeur as Commissaire Fardiano of Marseille
Credits:
Directed by Jean-Pierre Melville
Written by Melville, José Giovanni, based on Le deuxième souffle by Giovanni
Produced by Charles Lumbroso, Andre Labay
Cinematography Marcel Combes
Edited by Monique Bonnot, Michèle Boëhm
Music by Bernard Gérard
Production companies: Les Productions Montaigne
Charles Lumbroso
Release date: November 2, 1966 (Paris)
Running time: 140 minutes
Vincendeau, Ginette (2003). Jean-Pierre Melville An American in Paris. British Film Institute.
