Rich, delicious post, Chris. I have over a dozen films to post about in this thread. So I thought of doing brief paragraphs like your post for the London Film Festival. Now I'm glad I didn't cut corners when dealing with Melville's debut. I'm responding to your post in stages.

Originally posted by Chris Knipp
I wonder why Cocteau got Melville to direct Les Enfants Terribles instead of directing it himself. I guess it wasn't material that was surrealistic enough for him to bother with.

This excerpt from filmmaker and cineaste Richard Misek's essay on Cocteau is useful I think.

Cocteau was no Orson Welles. His avant-garde temperament fuelled his desire to rewrite the rules of film. But unlike his great contemporary, also a self-confessed amateur in the field of film, Cocteau did not have a strong enough vision to counter the aesthetic conventional wisdom of the time. Faced with the technical and logistical pressures of shooting a full-length film, he often found himself unsure of what to do with the camera. So he fell back on his crew and on the conventional film language of the time: eye-level camera, strict continuity editing and of course the 180º Rule. A disparity between his unconventional subject matter and his adherence to classical film language can be seen to varying degrees in all his films.

Les Enfants terribles was itself filmed in 1950 by Jean-Pierre Melville, in close collaboration with Cocteau. Melville had been making films since he was a child, and brought with him an instinctive understanding of film form. In contrast to Cocteau's modest camera movements, Melville utilised the full gamut of camera techniques at his disposal. He used long, elaborate dolly shots as well as handheld shots, long-lens close-ups and ultra-wide angle master shots. In his editing, he was not afraid to use ellipsis or to cross the line. And he finished the film with a crane shot so breathtakingly operatic that it immediately found its way into French film history.

Léon Morin, prêtre, starring Belmondo and Emanuelle Riva is another Meliville film that takes place in the occupation. I don't even remember it.

This is my review of the film:

Leon Morin, Priest (France, 1961) on PAL dvd
The second of Melville's trio of films set during the occupation of France was a critical and commercial hit. The protagonist is not J.P. Belmondo's Morin but Emmanuelle Riva's Barny, a bisexual widow and atheist with communist leanings. As the film opens, Barny has her half-Jewish daughter baptized and entrusted to two old ladies living in the country. We are introduced to Barny's mostly female co-workers, some of which are collaborating to some extent with the occupying Italian and German forces. Her Jewish supervisor changes his identity and emigrates and Barny feels attracted to the beautiful woman who takes his place. Fifteen minutes into the film, she meets Morin. The balance of the film concerns the relationship that develops between these disparate characters. Will Barny's curiosity about Christianity result in a conversion? Will their acquaintance turn into friendship or perhaps, erotic passion? Will Barny actively pursue her new boss? Melville's first cut of the film, based on Beatrix Beck's autobiographical novel, was over one hour longer than the film that premiered at the Venice FF. While the film evokes quite successfully this tragic period in French history, aspects of Leon Morin, Priest that concern political collaboration/resistance are sketchy in the final cut. For instance, there's a brief scene in which Barny helps to hide a Jewish boy. It seems to come out of nowhere, and then the incident is never broached again. Mellvile was very proud of Leon Morin, Priest, going as far as calling it "perfect". It's undoubtedly a major film from a major director, but I wish we could see the 3-hour cut of the film. There are some dramatic setups at the onset that are not fully developed, in order to focus almost exclusively on the very interesting relationship between Barny and Morin. A relationship explored in all its complexities and ambiguities.