In 1962, French author José Giovanni wrote a novel entitled L’Excommunié about an ex-gangster who comes to Marseilles to help his friend, who has been framed for murder. It was adapted into a film titled A Man Named Rocca in 1961, with Jean-Paul Belmondo in the lead role. Eleven years later, in 1972, it was adapted again into a film titled La Scoumoune, and again, Jean-Paul Belmondo took the lead. Kino Lorber has just released both films on Blu-ray. I just watched them back-to-back, and now you get my review.
Buy A Man Named RoccaI find it utterly fascinating that the same actor played the same character in two different adaptations of the same novel. Has that ever happened before? Surely it has in the history of cinema, but I can’t think of any other times like this. The plots of both films are almost identical, so it becomes an interesting look into how two different filmmakers tell this story and how one actor approaches the role.
Belmondo plays a man named Roberto, an ex-gangster who gets pulled back into things when his friend Xavier (Pierre Vaneck in Rocca, Michel Constantin in La Scoumoune) is arrested for a murder he didn’t commit. He’s pretty sure his partner, Villanova, set him up. Roberto comes into town, whacks Villanova, and takes over his casino. The hope is that with Villanova out of the way, the justice system will believe Xavier is innocent and let him go. Or something; neither film is entirely clear here. It doesn’t work, and Xavier finds himself sentenced to a long term in prison.
Roberto settles into his old gangster ways. He gets Xavier’s girl (Christine Kaufmann in Rocca, Claudia Cardinale in La Scoumoune) to help him. Most of this is to prove how big a badass he is. At one point, a guy is hired to kill Roberto, but when the hitman realizes who he is supposed to kill, he packs his bags and high-tails it out of there. Later, some American deserters start terrorizing the neighborhood, demanding protection money from local businesses. Roberto shoots them all dead. This lands him in the same prison as Xavier, where they plan various means of escape, but ultimately wind up volunteering to clear away land mines, which will grant them an early release.
Both films cover that basic plot summary pretty well. There are a few minor differences here and there, and the endings are quite a bit different, but mostly this is very much the same story.
A Man Named Rocca is by far the superior film. Honestly, La Scoumoune feels like a cash grab. Belmondo bought his own distribution company in the early 1970s, and this caused him to start making a lot of films designed to be big hits. A Man Named Rocca performed well, so I’m guessing they figured they could make some easy money filming it again. The production quality isn’t nearly as good, the direction is dull, the script takes several shortcuts, and while I wouldn’t say Jean-Paul Belmondo was phoning it in, he’s certainly not at the top of his game.
Buy A Man Named Rocca / La ScoumouneLa Scourmoune often feels choppy, like they were racing to get to the good stuff, while A Man Named Rocca isn’t afraid to take its time. For example, in A Man Named Rocca, we get details concerning how Xavier was set up by Villanova and their relationship. La Scoumoune skips all of that, so all we know is that Xavier is in prison and Roberto wants to get him out. And those American gangsters? In A Man Named Rocca, we come to understand that they are deserters and that they are pushing neighborhood businesses to pay them protection money. But in La Scourmoune, we just see them randomly show up, stealing from prostitutes, and beating people up. But for the longest time, it isn’t clear who they are or how they fit into the film.
La Scourmoune is more action packed. There are several scenes of violence in both films. A Man Named Rocca tends to keep them short, but La Scourmoune draws them out. The blowout with the Americans lasts quite a while and is filmed like a big bar fight in some old western. Maybe the best example of how these films differ in telling the same story is toward the end. Roberto and Xavier are sent to a beach where they are to uncover land mines so they can be defused. A Man Named Rocca creates real tension. There are close-ups on Belmondo’s face as he sweats buckets. We get a sense of the location and how they are locating the bombs. We understand how the mines can explode with the smallest wrong move. La Scoumoune tries to do all that and fails on nearly every level. We get no real sense of tension. Sure, bombs randomly explode, but the scenes are so poorly directed that you don’t get any sense of how the operation works and therefore how easily it fails.
In A Man Named Rocca, Belmondo is young, hot, and the epitome of cool. You believe he is the toughest guy around. In La Scoumoune, he looks about twenty years older, and while he’s still freaking Jean-Paul Belmondo, he doesn’t have nearly the edge he does in the other film.
I really want to watch A Man Named Rocca again, sometime when the memory of La Scoumoune has faded. I watched the newer film first, and since the plots are so similar, I feel like Rocca probably wasn’t as enjoyable as it could have been had I seen it first. But watching them back-to-back was a fascinating experience. I highly recommend it.
Extras for these films include the following:
A Man Named Rocca
- A 2021 4K Restoration by StudioCanal
- Audio Commentary by Mystery Writer and Filmmaker Max Allan Collins with Film Historian and Host of Cereal at Midnight Podcast, Heath Holland
- Dual-Layered BD50 Disc
- Lossless 2.0 Audio
- In French with Optional English Subtitles
La Scoumoune
- Audio Commentary by Film Critic and Author Simon Abrams
- Theatrical Trailer
- Dual-Layered BD50 Disc
- Lossless 2.0 Audio
- In French with Optional English Subtitles
