10 April 2018

The Road to Melville

Deux films de Jean-Pierre Melville:

LE SAMOURAI (1967) (B+) - A cool, handsome hired killer (Alain Delon) smolders through his days and nights in Melville's slick slow burn of a procedural. The screws twist slowly on stone-faced Jef Costello after a witness spots him leaving the scene of a shooting. Melville takes his time unwinding the sketchy plot. It's more about mood than narrative. Pretty gals aid Jef's cause. The colors are flatter than you'd expect from French cinema of the era; certainly grittier than Godard.

BOB LE FLAMBEUR (1956) (A-minus) - Bob the Gambler (Roger Duchesne) swaggers through the casinos and nightclubs of Paris in this early Melville effort in black and white. Bob headlines a complex plan to pull off a monumental casino heist. The femme fatale of the moment is the soft and pure Isabelle Corey. Bob, with his flowing white hair, has a recklessness about him that seems to portend doom. Melville explodes on the film scene with a verite style that revels in street scenes. Duchesne seems to sense that he is at the end of a long career, going for one last score along with his character.
  

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