Melville X 4

As a cure for the cinematic summertime blues, I thought maybe a Melville quadruple feature would do the trick. And indeed it did. I sat down with four of the French masters' films, starting with his 1949 debut, Le Silence de La Mer, just out on European DVD from Eureka's Masters of Cinema Series, last weekend. (I thought I'd do a marathon, but my time not being entirely my own, I wrapped up the fourth film in my program this morning.) The huge critical success of Melville's 1968 Army of Shadows on its first U.S. theatrical release last year has set off something of a Melville revival on these shores—his crime thriller Le Doulos is going around the rep houses here in a new print. The current perception of Melville here is that of a somewhat hardboiled cinephile, which he certainly was to a certain extent, what with the likes of later crime pictures such as Le Samourai and Le Cercle Rouge. But of the four pictures I chose—all but one on foreign-region DVD as of this writing—only one, Le Doulos, is a genre picture. The other films give a different means of access to Melville the cinematic poet and thinker. After my immersion, I'm almost ready to put him alongside Bunuel. And it's not just on account of my gratitude for the recalibrating of my sense of cinema the movies acomplished.

Le Silence de la Mer was an independent film in all respects—many of those respects provoking the ire of French film unions, which tried to block its screenings. Melville produced it himself and his crew, such as it was, was skeletal—largely Melville and cinematographer Henri Dacae, that's it. (The sound was post-synced.)

Melville based the film on a resistance-era novel by Vercors (the pen name of Jean Bruller) without buying the rights. Instead, he told Bruller that if he didn't approve of the film, he could say the word and block its release. Melville seems to have been a man of some pursuasiveness—he wound up shooting most of the film in Bruller's own house, where the events that inspired Bruller's novel took place.

Le Silence is something of a chamber piece, a very simple story with a small number of settings. Jean-Marie Robain and Nicole Stephane portray and old man and his niece, who are told that a portion of their roomy house is going to be the living quarters of a German officer . An old man and his niece can't be expected to be overtly militant types, and they're not; their form of resistance consists of not saying a word to the fellow. But that doesn't stop the officer, played by Howard Vernon (later of Alphaville and a kajillion Jess Franco films), from talking. In a series of lengthy monologues, he speaks of his love for France and his regret over the war, but avers that the "unfortunate" conflict will in the end lead to a glorious marriage between Germany and France. All the while Robain and Stephane sit, impassive, as their sympathy grows.

Vernon's face, all hard angles, is perhaps the least trust-inspiring in all of cinema; hence, you've got to wonder if his officer really means what he's saying or if he's just cynically blowing smoke. Melville's mise-en-scene also keeps one guessing, as in the shots of Vernon from inside the drawing-room's fireplace. The resolution is enigmatic, and moving; a bit of bleak poetry in a most unpoetic situation. This is a remarkably assured first feature with a lot of daring, as in the opening sequence, a bit of business unconnected to the rest of the picture's diegisis, demonstrating the original novel's samizdat status during the war.

Jean Cocteau was not only a friend of Melville's, he was also one of the Resistance figures Melville called upon to approve Le Silence; he not only approved, but enlisted Melville to direct an adaptation of his 1929 novel Les Enfants Terribles. The beautiful new Criterion disc features the same engaging but occasionally repetitive Gilbert Adair commentary that was on the BFI DVD of the film a few years back and packs on more extras. To call Les Enfants peculiar is to understate the case. Watching it once more, I thought of Mary McCarthy's characterizations of Nabokov's Pale Fire: "Faberge egg," "centaur-work" and so on. The absurdities/eccentricities of the tale itself—a too-close, constantly squabbling brother-sister pair are brought ever closer by the brother's injury in a snowball fight, and then the death of their mother—and of the film's circumscribed world—the brother and sister, supposedly adolescents, are played by the 25-and-27-year old, respectively, Edouard Dermithe and Nicole Stephane—are treated with a complete straight face by Melville. And the sobreity, improbably enough, pays off; the picture reaches the heights of Racine-like tragedy (as Adair notes) as the characters' betrayals pay deathly dividends.

Melville's shooting-on-the-fly methods, use of actual locations, and inventive but hardly stately visual style all influenced the Nouvelle Vague, and the Nouvelle Vague influenced him in turn, as 1962's Occupation-set Leon Morin, Pretre, shows. The freedom Godard and Truffaut and others insisted on seems to have emboldened Melville a bit in that here there's more of the liberty-taking he showed younger filmmakers. A scene of young children preparing for mass is done in a series of quick dissolves. The use of once-seemingly outmoded visual devices that were joyously revived by the New Wavers is more pronounced, e.g. the optical wipe; some scenes last mere seconds; and so on. That said, this is one of Melville's quietest and most dialogue-heavy films, consisting largely of conversations between the title priest and a young atheist widow (Emmanuelle Riva, of Hiroshima mon Amour) about the nature of God and faith. Leon Morin is not the kind of Father today's Vatican would approve, what with his talk of "a larger Church" than the Catholic one. Melville's casting of Jean-Paul Belmondo in the title role was a piece of counterintuitive genius; having established himself as a supremely ironical performer in Godard's A Bout de Souffle, here he is asked to portray a paragon of sincerity. Belmondo's seemingly innate amiability enables him to do so without coming off in the slightest bit pompous. It's a remarkable performance.

A Belmondo more familiar to American viewers—gun-toting, trenchcoat wearing, etc., turns up in Melville's next picture, 1963's Le Doulos. (He's seen here menacing the great Michel Piccoli, who plays a rather sympathetic nemesis.) Melville was correct in deeming this his first true policier; the thoroughly beguiling 1956 Bob Le Flambeur, while situated in a milieu of cops and robbers, is more the world's greatest shaggy-dog story than any kind of noir. The next four of six of Melville's remaining films would be crime pictures—the exceptions being Army of Shadows and the little-seen L' Aine des Ferchaux—and Le Doulos sets a template of sorts. It's a twist-filled tale of what passes for honor among thieves that, in a more convoluted way, puts us back in the territory of Le Silence de la Mer. Just as that film makes the viewer wonder about the true intentions of the Nazi officer, in Le Doulos we're treated to the spectacle of Belmondo's crook Silien being a brute and a shitheel, with seemingly no motive besides self-enrichment of both the monetary and sensuous kinds. This kind of blatant amorality is rare in a Melville "hero" but more important, at this point in moviemaking it's rare in any filmmaker's "hero," so of course one's guard is up. As it happens, Melville's moral compass is fully operational here, even if the movie's final irony is one of a fatalist rather than a moralist. The film's unshowy virtuosity is a fantastic pleasure—an eight-minute uninterrupted take of a cat-and-mouse police interrogation almost out-Premingers-Preminger—as is the ease and absolute confidence with which Melville ushers you into the latest of his created worlds, with a sole shadowy figure on a dimly lit street and blasts of Paul Misraki's crime-jazz score. Sublime.

N.B., three out of the four pictures discussed above are as of now only out on foreign region DVD, so those without such items beware. Still, they're cheap enough, and fare such as this completely justifies the investment.

Comments

[demimonde]

You did it, as promised! Impressive, Snake. (I must add that a Certain Person Who Posts Here ran out to buy an all-region DVD player on your recommendation and came back with ... not an all-region DVD player. Because they're "hard to find." Now we have two not-all-region DVD players. Set him straight and it's one loaf of chocolate-sour-cherry bread and two marks for the Kenny household.)

[Marshall]

Crazy. I just finsihed BOB LE FLAMBEUR. Quite good. Useless voiceover and awful ending, saved by that glorious final line. Why wasn't Roger Duchesne more famous? His charisma is so intense it's almost absurd.

That said, and I know I'll probably get flamed to death, but I prefer Neil Jordan's remake THE GOOD THIEF. The central relationship between Bob and the girl was much more emotionallly compelling, the supporting cast was more fleshed out and interesting, and I feel it had a lot to say about the Europe of today. One of the very underrated films of this young century. Plus Nick Nolte was magnificent, and the ending was infinitely better, not because it was happy and pat, but because it was clever and logical and fit what had come before. Not as shaggy, but more satisfying.

[G. Kenny]

Before the flaming starts, Marshall, I'll tell you that while I don't necessarily PREFER "The Good Thief," I like it an awful lot.

[WP]

I actually think I might prefer The Good Thief, too, certainly in terms of pure entertainment (I haven't really taken the time to do a side-by-side comparison of artistic value or an analysis of their cultural relevance to their respective periods in film history, and, um, I don't think I will. So entertainment value wins this round). I am firmly in your camp re: the supporting cast, too. Jordan's casting of the Polish brothers was inspired.

[alice]

Hi Glenn,

I've been checking out your blog recently and I love the diversity of posts
and topics that you cover. I'm writing because I thought that you and your
blog readers might be
interested in a screening by Rooftop Films coming up this Thursday at Westbeth Artist's Community at 55 Bethune Street. Rooftop Films is a non-profit film festival and production collective that supports, creates, promotes, and shows daring short films worldwide and in a weekly summer rooftop film festival. The program, called 'The Show Must Go On' is a collection of short films about people who find meaning and value in the pieces and places that others have left behind.

I hope this proves interesting and useful to you; we were hoping that
perhaps you might be willing to post the link on your blog as well so that
your readers will know about these great upcoming films.
Check us out at www.rooftopfilms.com

Thanks,
Alice

[vadim]

Part of the reason Leon Morin has miniscule, second-snippet scenes is that it was slashed from something like a 190-minute cut after the premiere. (Ginette Vincendeau's book on Melville, An American in Paris, is pretty invaluable if you haven't picked it up.) Readers should also hold off on that multi-region, since Rialto is planning to re-issue Leon Morin at some point. Good for them; for my money, it's far more interesting than Army of Shadows, if also far less "Melvillian."

[Red Bottom shoes]

Never pick fashion over your image.

[Belstaff Jacket]

Now we have a great walkway that goes to the beach and to the canals that came from the partnership of community with government

[Cheap Red Bottom shoes]

Four short words sum up what has lifted most successful individuals above the crowd: a little bit more.

[Moncler Jakke]

This article tell the reality of very important organization and clearly gives the reasons that what they are doing. Very information article and actions should be taken against such organizations