Aspect Ratio: 1.66:1
Audience Rating: Unrated
Binding: DVD
Brand: Image Entertainment
EAN: 0715515032926
Format: Anamorphic, Black & White, Digital Sound, Mono, NTSC
Label: The Criterion Collection
Languages: FrenchOriginal LanguageDolby Digital 2.0 MonoEnglishSubtitled
Manufacturer: The Criterion Collection
MPN: IMEDCC1771D
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: The Criterion Collection
Region Code: 1
Release Date: October 07, 2008
Running Time: 144 minutes
Studio: The Criterion Collection
Theatrical Release Date: 1966

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Editorial Review:

Product Description:
Studio: Image Entertainment Release Date: 10/07/2008

Amazon.com:
It's hard to imagine that crime novelist/screenwriter José Giovanni didn't write with melancholy tough guy Lino Ventura in mind. First came 1960's Classe Tous Risques, then 1966's Le Deuxième Soufflé, and then 1969's Sicilian Clan. In Jean-Pierre Melville's Giovanni adaptation--the title translates as "Second Wind"--Ventura plays deadly, yet deeply moral lifer Gustav "Gu" Minda. When the 46-year-old busts out of the pen, three people wait for him in Paris: nightclub proprietor Sophie Manouche (Christine Fabréga), double-crossing rival Jo Ricci (Marcel Bozzuffi), and manipulative Inspector Blot (Diabolique's Paul Meurisse). After Minda and Manouche's unflappable bodyguard, Alban (Le Trou's Michel Constantin), dispatch the thugs trying to blackmail Manouche, the former partakes in an armored-car heist in order to flee the country with the cool blonde (like the bank robbery in Michael Mann's Heat, this entire sequence plays out in broad daylight). Needless to say, not everyone gets out alive. Compared to sleek Melville classics like Bob le Flambeur and Le Samouraï, this 144-minute movie has its longeurs, but Melville and Ventura go together like Scorsese and De Niro. Consider this understated drama a dry run for their Resistance-era masterpiece, Army of Shadows (in which Meurisse also appears). Supplemental features include detail-oriented commentary from author Ginette Vincendeau (Jean-Pierre Melville: An American in Paris) and programmer Geoff Andrew (the British Film Institute), remembrances from publicist-turned-director Bertrand Tavernier, an essay by critic Adrian Danks, and TV interviews with Ventura and Melville, who describes the actor as "a force of nature" and "a monolith." --Kathleen C. Fennessy




Rating: - Another good Melville film
This review is for the Criterion Collection DVD edition of the film

Le deuxième souffle , French for "Second Breath" is about a man who breaks out of prison to pay off some thugs blackmailing his sister.

This film has a well known robbery sequence which I found very impressive. This was the last film Jean-Pierre Melville made before his first masterpiece, Le Samouraï. I think this is one of his better films and liked the acting in it also.

The supplements ... Read More

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Rating: - Another of Melville's existential thugs struggling with the Code, and with 144 minutes to do it in
Nearly two-and-a-half hours is a long, long time in the movies, especially so when Jean-Pierre Melville is once more demonstrating his passion for hard boiled gangsters. With Le Deuxieme Souffle (Second Breath), it seems to me that Melville has given us some extraordinary set pieces of heists, shoot-outs and chases...including one roll-along-the-floor-while-shooting-a-gun-in-each-hand-and-plugging-all-the-guys-who-were-going-to-plug-you that now has become a pretty-boy-actor-as-tough-guy cliché. ... Read More

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Rating: - The Ventura advantage
One of the chief merits of this film is having Lino Ventura as star instead of the more glamorous Belmondo or Delon (Melville's typical choices). Ventura has no veneer. His hangdog face and stocky body give an authenticity and grittiness to it -- even in the midst of the usual Melville iconography of trenchcoats, American cars, and jazz. And, unlike the other two actors, he naturally embodies the fatalism that's a vital part to this story.

This is probably my favorite of Melville's gangster ... Read More

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Rating: - Melville's First-Class French Caper.
Jean-Pierre Melville's 1966 film, Le deuxième souffle, stars Lino Ventura (Classe Tous Risques) as dangerous gangster, Gustave Minda (also known as "Gu"), Paul Meurisse (Diabolique) as suave Inspector Blot, and Raymond Pellegrin (A Fistful of Hell) as Paul Ricci. The French crime-thriller tells the story of Gustave's escape from prison, only to discover upon arriving in Paris that his sister is being blackmailed by other criminals. With Inspector Blot in pursuit, Gustave then plots one last daring heist ... Read More

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Rating: - A prison escape, a heist, and a Colt .45
Film noir master Jean-Pierre Melville's 1966 2 hr. and 24 min. mob epic has everything you want to see in a Melville film: a prison escape sequence, gangland violence, cool jazz clubs with leggy blondes, Colt .45's, fedoras, crime bosses putting together crews to pull off big jobs (in this case 1 billion in platinum bars), an intricately planned and executed heist sequence, stakeouts, hideouts, double-crosses, betrayals, brutal interrogations involving torture, revenge, and, most importantly, memorable characters ... Read More

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