Jean-Pierre Melville

Jean-Pierre Melville

1)An unsentimental writer and director.
2)He often follows a central character through a process that is difficult and isolating
3)Such as the last job planned by a lifelong gambler

The following scene from Bob le Flambeur (1955) shows how Melville's film laid the stylistic groundwork for the French New Wave that would emerge a few years later. The scene particularly brings to mind Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless (1960) that we will study in the next Module.

Bob le Flambeur (1955):

Trailer Click Here

We saw an extended scene with the club cigarette girl and her boyfriend. 

(I saw Le samouraï (1967) it had a beautiful hitman that looked like James Dean  but it looks like a noir film. His gang decides they want to kill him as do the police. Beautiful jazz club and relationship with a smart beautiful prostitute). The book said the filming out on the streets of Paris influenced the
New Wave directors - especially the handheld camera work. )

Here's a good article on it Click Here

This is a quote from Criterion:

In a career-defining performance, Alain Delon plays Jef Costello, a contract killer with samurai instincts. After carrying out a flawlessly planned hit, Jef finds himself caught between a persistent police investigator and a ruthless employer, and not even his armor of fedora and trench coat can protect him. An elegantly stylized masterpiece of cool by maverick director Jean‑Pierre Melville, Le samouraï is a razor-sharp cocktail of 1940s American gangster cinema and 1960s French pop culture—with a liberal dose of Japanese lone-warrior mythology. Source

An interpretation by Roberto Mulinacci who I follow on FB Essential European Cinema 1902-1980s he's really brilliant:

Jeff Costello (an excellent Alain Delon) is the lonesome "killer of the underground" who speechless wanders and acts into a heart-breaking Paris...

"Le  samouraï" (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1967), is a magnificent movie filmed by a sort of "hardness" able to avoid any spectacular and/or sentimental weakness; just one (according to some, the best) of the astonishing "polars" of the director who, here, uses the bad hero of the gangster movie genre to present a bitter reflection on the human solitude.  (RM****)

r.m. 

In class we saw a clip of Bob le Flambeur (1955) B&W
It's in a cool Parisian nightclub with a cute cigarette girl. 
Next scene she is waking up in a guys bed. 
What can I do to show you I love you... give me the moon. 
I rob the Grand Prix for you...he goes to kiss her and she says - i'm sleepy. 
She's bored and he's very in love. 

This is a picture of the scene we saw.

1962 film Le Doulos - a review of this film supposedly a favorite of Tarantino. Click Here

Review on LEON MORIN,  PRIEST Click Here

Melville scene in Breathless Click Here

Quote from Melville: 
Asked his aim in life, Melville said “To become immortal – then to die.” With BOB LE FLAMBEUR his wish was granted. I'm not sure where this is from - it's subjective. 

A Melville Review and movie suggestion:

Cocteau's twin.

An emblematic still of "Les Enfants Terribles" (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1950), an "existential tragedy" (the adaption of Cocteau's play with the same title) that, despite a few unbalanced by the literary source (and the voice over of the Poet) remains however a true Melville-an movie (some directorial inventions; the oneiric atmospheres, the theme of the "enclosed universe"...) that I consider mandatory to any cinephile to know. LET was much loved by the Authors of the French "nouvelle vague" (mainly Chabrol and Truffaut) who saw in Melville (through this film) a precursor of their movement. (RM***) Roberto Mulinacci