Director Spotlight: Jean-Pierre Melville

Jean-Pierre Melville epitomized the nouveau film noir or neo-noir movement in France in the 1960s and early 1970s. His love of American crime movies in the 1940s and 1950s served as the impetus behind his career as a filmmaker. Born Jean-Pierre Grumbach, he adopted "Melville" as nom de famille due to his fascination with the writer Herman Melville. In his early years he was known to watch 4 or 5 films a day, and was a real cinephile. After his first successful film, Le Silence de la Mer, in 1949, he went on to film a very notable (and controversial) adaptation of Jean Cocteau's Les Enfants Terribles in 1950. Overall, Melville's success was due to his unbelievable attention to form, and his penchant for keeping his films independent (often serving as producer, writer, director, he also had his own studio in Paris). People could say that he is to film noir what Sergio Leone was to spaghetti Westerns. Sadly, his career was cut short when he suffered a heart attack at age 55 in 1973. Nonetheless, he remains the master of cold-hearted cool.

Les Enfants Terribles is a beautifully constructed meditation on the obsessive love between two siblings. The story itself is very Cocteau-esque, dealing with the secretive and deranged world of the misunderstood and ultimately tragic youth. Narrated by Cocteau, the film is often mistaken as his creation, rather than Melville's. It is not a typical Melvillian film because of this: Cocteau served as a consultant to the film, and many images, albeit with Melville behind the camera, are clearly Cocteau's creation. This sensitive and convoluted subject of ownership still resonates today when viewing this film: who was the real creator behind it? Needless to say, Melville's quick departure from literary film adaptation was a smart choice, since he went on to film some of the best neo-noir and French crime pictures in his later career. He was so very attentive to detail, it was almost cringe-worthy (see Un Flic commentary for specifics). Yet, that was his style and established himself as a real auteur in French film history.

Bob Le Flambeur (1956) [commentary coming soon]

Jean-Paul Belmondo trio(!):

[Melville was quick to entice JPB to film a trio of movies after co-starring with him in Jean-Luc Godard's amazing film, Breathless (1960) --side note: Melville played a nihilist author, Parvulesco; my favorite quote: "What is your greatest ambition in life? Answer: To become immortal, then die."---
JPB encapsulated that humourous, self-deprecating gangster so well that Melville had to have him in his movies. Commentary coming soon.]
Leon Morin, Pretre (1961)
Le Doulos (1962)
L'Aine des Ferchaux (1963)

Le Deuxieme Souffle (1966)

Le Samourai (1967)

Melville's first film with Alain Delon proved to be a grand success, on both ends. Delon played the character so effortlessly. Melville employs the anti-hero typical in most crime movies, and sets theme up in austere, minimalist backdrops in virtually unidentifiable parts of Paris and the suburbs. The dialogue is sparse, the gazes steely-eyed, the decisions cutthroat, the mood sombre. In the end the film is a tough look at what really lies beneath the slick, sad, sobering lifestyles of criminals and their adversaries.

Le Cercle Rouge (1969)

Delon's second film with Melville was an ensemble cast, with Delon teamed up with Gian Maria Volonte and Yves Montand (who btw is beyond excellent as the reclusive ex-cop who suffers from horrible drug-induced hallucinations). Against the will of le commisaire (played by Bourvil), they seek to rob a famed Place Vendome jewellry store and make out for one last heist. Doomed, as always, the criminals meet their fate. One of my favorite scenes is the most sympathetic, where Bourvil comes home to his apartment to feed his cats. It's a calm scene (one can't help but think he'll come home to see them dead, poisoned by the very foe he's out to catch), but lends to the humanistic nature of Melville's directing. He likes to portray these men as humans, despite the cruel and cold environments in which they exist (for Bourvil, the police bureau, for Corey et al, the criminal world they create amidst the rest of society).

Un Flic (1972)

In his last film, Melville has the opening scene a blustery rainy day marred by a bank hold up. Turns out the robber, Simon, a nightclub owner (and lover of Cathy, played by Catherine Deneuve), is friends with the cop who investigates the heist (played by Delon, natch). The film lags on a bit and we're left wondering what the real point of it was, since Delon and Deneuve really don't shine and Simon's character starts off hopeful but ends up getting cut in a quick and easy, no-explanations sort of way. The scene that really sticks is probably the same for most viewers, since it's the longest sequence and fails to resonate with the overall mood of the film. Simon successfully spelunks his way on top of a moving train via a helicopter (Mission Impossible-style, with egregious toy models serving as wide angle shots of helicopter-et-moving-train-stand ins. WTF?!) On the train, we sit through Richard Crenna undressing in the bathroom: painstakingly, he puts on a robe and slippers, washes his face, combs his hair, and presents himself as a sleeping traveler. This scene is long and really doesn't make a lot of sense: why do we have to watch every single movement he makes? In the end, he's cut short of really establishing his motive and his character, despite that scene. Although not his best film, it was Melville's last, and worth watching.