The French Heist movie Le Deuxieme Souffle (Second Breath) has everything you can ask for in a film noir heist film. A criminal that has escaped prison, police following the moves of the major players with such a cool attitude, a femme fatale who's in love with the hardened criminal, and a score that's worth the risk. It's the way the Jean-Pierre Melville crafted this movie that makes it a must see for anyone that enjoys crime stories.
In beautiful black & white film, Melville composes wonderfully long scenes of flight from prison, sets the mood in both planning scenes with the gangsters and the romantic interlude with Gu (our main protagonist played by Lino Ventura) and Manouche (his love interest played by Christine Fabrega). The cool Inspector Blot doesn't skip a beat when in the room with criminals covering for their partners in crime nor does he break a sweat when interrogating them once he's got them in custody.
Melville cleverly goes between the criminals telling what they are going to do and the police showing where things might be happening to give a duel narrative for the audience to follow the story along without seeming to spoon feed the material. The whole time line for the story takes a little over a months time and the title cards tell us when everything's going down to keep track. The added time on the departure is worth the risk for Gu as he needs the money to travel, so he decides to do one last score for a large sum of money. However, he doesn't know all the players until it's too late.
We watched another Melville movie in class that had similar subject matter. In Le Doulos every character in it was two faced. Wages of Fear by Henri-Georges Clouzot showed the desperation of a man that was released from prison and couldn't find any other work but manual labor. The struggles he had to make ends meet were the least of his worries in the field. Every turn he had issues from the co-workers to the location itself being dangerous.
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