Le Doulos (1962), directed by Jean-Pierre Melville. Criterion Channel at home on Saturday, February 11.

I love the crime films of Jean-Pierre Melville. From the unreliable internet I read that he was in the French resistance, code named “Melville” (after his favorite author, Herman), and he wore aviator glasses and a cowboy hat. He’s kind of considered the father of the French New Wave, and though I love their adherents, man, I love Melville more. His movies are existentially cool, thought-provoking, weird, and thrilling. Le Doulos, like the others, involves criminals, revenge, a failed heist, frustrated cops, and a double-cross of such complexity it blows your mind when its revealed. Melville’s thieves are the embodiment of cool, but it’s always apparent that they are either dead broke, or, if they have money, it was eared through hard and risky work, and accumulated over time, squirreled away for the day when they can retire to some country farm or island. And on that day, you can believe that nothing will go right and they’ll most likely end up dead, or their best friend will end up dead.

Great dialogue, too: As one criminal noted, it was “a simple, fatal gesture” that ended up in the death of one beloved colleague.