Jean-Pierre Melville and his long standing infatuation with Hollywood "Film Noir",which he was the most devoted follower of, in entire history of French cinema, produced the whole line of best French crime pictures ever. In this one, he's in absolute top form on this neatly constructed, no nonsense caper film. Building a story of old school criminals with sense of criminal honesty and honor, around 800 million heist, Melville, tells many stories, from human relations, betrayals and greed, to love and friendship that will go all the way.

The dialogs are great. Witty police inspector Comissaire Blot, beautifully portrayed by Paul Meurisse and Lino Ventura's Gustave "Gu" Minda,play the game of cat and mouse with no unnecessary talk, and no unnecessary action. Melville devoted a lot of attention to detail, and this film deservedly looks like a crime-action documentary, with no plot holes or "how the hell this or that could have happened" types of questions for the viewer, which is very important for mature audiences that appreciate classic films. I think that this may be the best film Melville made in the 60's, even better than "Army of Shadows" or the "Samourai",and was the last he made in his own studio that burned up during the production of "Samourai" in 1967, which may explain the possibilities he had, to devote time and attention to details. If you appreciate a good crime picture, be sure not to miss it.

Three prisoners break from the prison and the notorious Gustave 'Gu' Minda (Lino Ventura) is the only one that survives. He heads to Paris where he meets his lover Manouche (Christine Fabrega) and his friend and Manouche's bodyguard Alban (Michel Constantin) that take him to a hideout. Meanwhile the smart Commissary Blot (Paul Meurisse) is investigating a shooting plotted by the mobster Jo Ricci (Marcel Bozzufi) and the gangster Jacques the Lawyer (Raymond Loyer) that is murdered.

Gu decides to travel to Italy but he is short of money; his friend Orloff (Pierre Zimmer) invites him to participate in the heist of an armored truck with his friend Paul Ricci (Raymond Pellegrin) and the gangsters Antoine (Denis Manuel) and Pascal (Pierre Grasset) in Marseille. The talkative Inspector Fardiano (Paul Frankeur) is responsible for the investigation, but the persistent Commissary Blot believes that Gu is behind the scheme.

"Le Deuxième Soufflé" is a realistic police story by Jean-Pierre Melville with great performances. It is impressive how I did not feel the 150 minutes running time, since the screenplay is very well written. The code of honor of Gu contrasts with the lack of ethics of the police detectives. The duel between Gu and Blot is another attraction of this great movie. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "Os Profissionais do Crime" ("The Professionals of the Crime")

I had seen nearly everything that is readily available from Jean-Pierre Melville in the United States by the time I got to Le Deuxieme soufflé, which may be part of why I didn't respond overwhelmingly to it. After such challenging, methodical and precisely existential crime masterpieces as Le Samourai, Le Cercle Rouge, Bob le flambeur and the underrated Le Doulos, this one just seemed to not pack the same kind of punch that the others did. Again, this may be the fault on the viewer for seeing this last among his mostly thriller-oriented oeuvre, but perhaps it's also some of Melville's fault too; again and again, as the dedicated and ruthless auteur that he was (one of the great French directors I would argue),he kept coming back to men in trench-coats with grim expressions figuring out on both sides- criminal and detective- of how to plot the next move or, for the former, how to keep from the fatalism of the plot.

Which, for Melville, is something that comes second nature. The difference, perhaps, in this case is that the length (a whopping two and a half hours, longer than both The Red Circle and Army of Shadows) and the amount of details in the structure of the story (i.e. what happened on such and such a day made this happened could've been snipped, albeit I can't pinpoint to which) bog down some of the more successful aspects to the picture. Which is also to say that for all of its minor misgivings, Le Deuxieme soufflé (or, simply, The Second Breath) is near-classic Melville, with nail-bitingly tense suspense scenes like the opening escape from the prison and the latter heist sequence- somewhat more obvious and less coolly ambitious as Red Circle.

There's the amazing cinematography as well, a trademark of Melville and his crew to make things gritty but smooth in precision and style, and the performances from Paul Meurisse as the Detective (maybe my favorite performance of the picture just for the intelligence he imbues in the character),and Lino Ventura as one of the quintessential Melville anti-heroes, Gu, the convict who wants in on the big 200 million heist. And even as it could be Melville's most "talky" picture after Bob le flambeur (which is relative to how pleasantly light, or how seemingly sparse, his films are with dialog),when the characters speak it's to the point of with some quotable spunk to them.

There's an icy, unspoken angst in Melville's world of criminals, almost questioning but still true to the notion of the 'policier', where you'd want the criminals to get away with it if the detective wasn't so doggone determined all the time. It's another fine piece of film-making from the director, just not an all-time-top flick - more along the lines of Un flic. 8.5/10