MartinHafer Some folks might watch "Hail, Mafia" and assume this is just a typical French gangster film. However, French film noir was quite different. This film, instead is much like if you started with French film noir and blended it with the New Wave...creating an odd sort of hybrid. Like many productions of the era, although it's not an American film is stars American actors. This is because in post-war Europe (particularly Italy), folks thought having American stars in their movies would make them more marketable and even B-list actors like Henry Silva and Jack Klugman would make the pictures very international.The plot to this story is very simple. Two gangsters have been contracted to kill a third gangster. But before they ultimately kill the guy, there is a build-up--with angry Phil (Klugman) and more business-like and cold Schaft (Silva). It's all accompanied by a lot of jazz music and is almost good...almost. The problem for me is twofold. First, there just isn't much in the way of plot. Second, this is a clearly a case of style over substance. Not a terrible film...but there are so many better French gangster films...such as any of the pictures of Jean-Pierre Melville.

GUENOT PHILIPPE This film is adapted from a Pierre Lesou's novel, the author of LE DOULOS, adapted by Jean-Pierre Melville in 62; one of his masterpieces. I read all Lesou's novels, I know them very well, and this novelist was the closest of them all to Melville's world. A world of cold, complex, and metaphysics friendship among gangsters. Cerebral atmospheres that most of Melville's fans - and there are many - know as well as I do. Yes, yes, yes, Melville SHOULD have done this film, HAIL MAFIA, it should have been a film for him. And certainly not for Raoul Levy. I won't say he is a lousy film maker. I think he did the best. But when I think of Melville when watching this film, I feel pain inside of me.In his movie, Levy shows us a short sequence of Brigitte Bardot dancing in one of her films: ET DIEU CREA LA FEMME. Levy committed suicide several months after his feature - HAIL MAFIA - because of his love for Bardot.A good film, as far as I can appreciate. It is very rare in France. I only got it from the USA.

django-1 Writer-director-producer Raoul Levy hit a home run with this moody, intelligent, very-well acted crime film. On the surface, the plot seems simple--mafia soldiers Henry Silva and Jack Klugman are on an assignment to kill a former mafia guy played by Eddie Constantine. But the story--and most of the film--is really about the relationship between Henry Silva's and Jack Klugman's characters, and both give brilliant performances. I would never have thought of this pair of actors together, but as well as I know each of their works, I saw only the two characters, real people, not the actors. Eddie Constantine is not in the film all that much--it's Klugman and Silva's movie. Raoul Levy is probably best known here in the US as the producer of five Bridget Bardot films and of the underrated THE DEFECTOR, the last movie of Montgomery Clift. The washed-out monochrome photography by Raoul Coutard, the brilliant jazz score by Hubert Rostaing, and Levy's intelligent, literate script all come together in a powerful film that will pack an unexpected wallop for those expecting just another euro-crime film. No wonder Henry Silva's european career took off right after this film. The existential plot could easily have been from a spaghetti western or a samurai film, and anyone who has ever considered those genres (and the euro-crime film) as metaphors for life and society should find a copy of this film as soon as possible. For me, one of the five best European-made crime films of the 1960's, and I've seen hundreds of them.

riggsy At the time in Paris, Eddie Constantine was much bigger than Jack Klugman. I haven't seen the film since its release, but I recall it as a fast-paced hard-bitten policier. My Dad was in there as the Mafia boss Hyman, and he calmly dispatched his enemies with one word from the putting green. Great fun.