LE SAMOURI (1967)

Jef Costello (Alain Delon), a coldly calculating hired killer, gets a contract to whack a nightclub owner. Several witnesses see him leaving the crime scene, and he's swept up in a police dragnet.. He's not worried--he prearranged an alibi with his call girl lover, and a pianist at the club who saw him leaving inexplicably denies that he's the perp. But the boss cop (Francois Perrier), is all over him like white on rice. Life gets further complicated for Jef when the people who hired him for the killing try to kill him because he'd been arrested, leading him to simultaneously trying to dodge the cops and to find out who's behind the contract on him. Then his would-be killers about-face and give him another contract.

Films-noir famously don't waste dialog. There's practically none here, but Delon carries it off with body language and personal style. Director Jean-Pierre Melville brilliantly uses long, seemingly boring scenes (corridors in police HQ, Delon on Metros and in his smudged, one-room apartment) to create constant tension and show how Jef must constantly be in control of his ever-deteriorating physical safety. Real French Existential stuff. Well done!