Le Samouraï

Jean-Pierre Melville wrote and directed Le Samouraï (released in Turkey as Kiralık Katil), a Franco-Italian neo-noir crime film from 1967. It stands out for its calm, stylized telling. It sold about 1.9 million tickets in France and earned positive reviews, with praise for Melville's script and atmosphere and for Alain Delon's performance.

Delon plays Jef Costello, a solitary, tight-lipped professional hitman in Paris. He plans the killing of a nightclub owner with his usual care, but witnesses see his face at the scene, among them the club's pianist Valérie. Costello is then caught between a police superintendent (François Périer) who closes in on him and the threat of the people who hired him. Nathalie Delon (Jane Lagrange) and Cathy Rosier (Valérie) complete the main cast. The title reflects the hero's samurai-like solitude, devotion to his work and loyalty to his word.

Melville adapted the script with Georges Pellegrin from Joan McLeod's novel The Ronin. Henri Decaë shot it and François de Roubaix wrote the music. A dubbed version reached the United States in 1972 as The Godson. John Woo's The Killer and Jim Jarmusch's Ghost Dog nod to it.