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The West End Library Virtual Film Club is a biweekly discussion group in which we examine two films during each meeting!
NOTE: The group meets virtually via Google Meet. For information on how to join, please contact Cody at cody.walker@dc.gov.
Every one of the films we discuss will be available to view for free on the Kanopy streaming service (www.kanopy.com), accessible through your DC Public Library card. The aim of the group is to engage with a deep and diverse pool of film history—we explore films both classic and contemporary, from a variety of artistic movements and regions.
On June 2nd, we will be discussing two stylish and fatalistic crime movies—Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Doulos and Johnnie To’s Election.
Le Doulos (1962)
Heavily inspired by American film noir, Jean-Pierre Melville created his own brand of crime film that would inspire generations of filmmakers across the world. Minimalist, existentialist, and pessimistic, his body of work represents an essential strain of neo-noir—influenced in large part by his time in the underground French Resistance during World War II (where he first adopted the alias of Melville as an alternative to his birth name, Grumbach). 1962’s Le Doulos is one of his most confident and deliberately plotted movies, a moody exploration of a vicious criminal underworld. Maurice Faugel (Serge Reggiani) is an ex-convict plotting a heist and nursing a vengeful grudge; Silien (Jean-Paul Belmondo) is an accomplice with his own agenda, suspected of being a police informant. Melville weaves a complex web of intersecting characters and motivations beginning with these two. Just how the puzzle pieces fit together, and who will ultimately survive, is a story that Melville tells with relish. While his penchant for pistols, trench coats, and fedoras has made Melville a staple of crime aficionados, his individualistic style also provided an inspiration the filmmakers of the French New Wave.
Election (2005)
The prolific and highly flexible Hong Kong director Johnnie To began his career with the venerable Shaw Brothers Studio and found his breakthrough success with the film All About Ah Long in 1989. In 1996, facing the impending handover of Hong Kong, To and his collaborator Wai Ka-Fai established their own studio, Milkyway Image. While To has worked in every conceivable genre, his crime films (influenced in no small part by Jean-Pierre Melville) have been the primary source of his international reputation. Of these, 2005’s Election is one of the finest. A departure from the moralizing themes of “heroic bloodshed” crime movies so popular in Hong Kong and abroad, this film centers on the election of the next chairman of the Wo Lin Shing triad. The criminal candidates are strikingly different—Lok (Simon Yam) is a cool-headed and businesslike, while Big D (Tony Leung Ka-fai) is aggressive and ruthless. Simple greed and miscommunication threaten the delicate transfer of power, and the election threatens to spiral into violence and disarray. Featuring a tremendous ensemble cast and a sprawling narrative, Election remains one of To’s finest movies and an altogether unique depiction of organized crime.
