Solo

The French New Wave never really produced an answer to the American crime film. Sure, Jean-Luc Godard gave us cool criminals in sunglasses and François Truffaut flirted with noir from time to time, but neither seemed particularly interested in the mechanics of crime itself. In Solo (1970) Jean-Pierre Mocky, isn’t really interested either. He takes a familiar policier framework and infects it with the bitterness, paranoia and political disillusionment that lingered in France after the failed social revolution of May 1968. The result is one of the strangest crime films of the era: part thriller, part political satire and part existential hangover.

Vincent Cabral (Mocky), a violinist, womanizer and occasional jewel thief, returns to France only to discover that his younger brother has become involved with a radical revolutionary group responsible for a string of assassinations targeting wealthy members of the bourgeoisie. As police and terrorists close in on one another, Vincent finds himself caught in the middle, less interested in politics than in preventing his brother from becoming another martyr for a cause that increasingly resembles a death wish.

What makes Solo interesting is that Mocky seems equally disgusted with everyone on screen. The wealthy elites are introduced participating in a depraved orgy before being riddled with bullets, but the revolutionaries aren't much better. They're angry, reckless and incapable of coming up with a plan to continue their aborted revolution. These aren’t Godard's youthful radicals, these are bitter, petulant children who simply refuse to grow up...and are eager to drag the rest of the country down with them.

Even when Solo threatens to collapse under the weight of its own political anger, there’s always Mocky’s “too cool for school” performance, dishing out philosophy and spitting bullets with equal flair. He’s obviously enjoying his role as a stand-in for American genre stalwarts like Robert Mitchum or Humphrey Bogart. But his film never quite strikes the perfect balance between noir-fueled nostalgia and satirical conservative war cry. Much like France itself at the time, it’s not sure exactly what it’s fighting to protect.

Radiance’s new 4K restoration handles the dark cinematography very well and adds some interesting supplementary material including interviews with Mocky himself, actor Anne Deleuze, and Mocky’s assistant, Eric Le Roy. The packaging includes a reversible sleeve and liner notes featuring a pair of Mocky interviews.