JEAN-PIERRE MELVILLE retrospective

[Chris Knipp]

Film Forum has held over Léon Morin, Priest till Tues., June 6 now.

LEON MORIN, PRIEST
Jean-Pierre Melville’s
LÉON MORIN, PRIEST
Through Tuesday, June 6
12:50 & 6:20 ONLY

(1961) Jean-Paul Belmondo and Emmanuelle Riva star in Melville's drama of the Occupation, based on the novel by Béatrix Beck. This new 4K restoration of the complete director's cut includes 11 minutes of never-before-seen footage.

"A GRIPPING AND GREAT MOVIE!"
– J. Hoberman, The New York Times

[Johann]

Thanks Chris.
I'd go to some of these Melville screenings in a heartbeat.

[Chris Knipp]

Léon Morin, Priest held over at Film Forum another week. More New Yorkers can watch it in the 4K restoration print. US Premiere of the complete director's cut.

It is now listed as running through Tuesday, June 6th!

[Chris Knipp]

Interviews with Jean-Pierre Melville.


Melville in Breathless

Now that Melville 100 has begun at Pacific Film Archive (it continues till August 18, 2017), perhaps it's a good time to capture a better sense of the mind and personality of the man. There are a number of filmed interviews online. The one in Godard's Breathless of course is a performance, and he's in the role of a famous writer. It's full of epigrams - Godard's genius combined with Melville's. Watch it HERE.

Melville typically hides behind movie director drag - suit, shades, and American cowboy hat - and his appearances are studied. But no doubt it is true as he says in this INTERVIEW that he hates shooting but is gentle with actors; that his first loves are editing and second, writing, and that he considers himself a "cobbler," a craftsman first and foremost.

Surf around on YouTube or DailyMotion, the French equivalent, and you'll find other appearances by Monsieur Melville.

27 minute film on Melville (no subtitles though).

IR we haven't time for the various books and major essays, we can soak up background on Melville through the bonus material of the nine Criterion Collection discs of his films.

[Johann]

Awesome. Kubrick loved editing more than shooting too.

[Chris Knipp]

It is probably the typical true auteur preference. But Melville's way of expressing himself is distinctive, both funny and powerful.

[Chris Knipp]

Le Samouraï tonight at PFA. And in NYC next Friday, Tavernier's new doc serves up a solid slice of French film history.


June 16, 2017.

Le Samouraï
Thursday, June 8 7 PM
Friday, June 16 8:30 PM
Jean-Pierre Melville
France, 1967
Imported Print
PFA/BAM

Alain Delon embodies cool as a solitary, silent Parisian killer flitting between hits and flings in this essential, influential assassin film. "Achieves an atmosphere of mesmerizing, otherworldly beauty" (Slant).

Coming to Quad Cinema NYC next week:

FILM & NOTHING BUT: BERTRAND TAVERNIER at the Quad (June 20-29). In My Journey Through French Cinema, opening June 23, the director Bertrand Tavernier, who started his career as a critic, takes filmgoers on a guided tour of France’s cinema history. But Mr. Tavernier’s own body of work — which arguably had its crowning moment in the 1980s — may be underexplored today. (Who remembers Death Watch, to be shown June 24 and 28, an early science fiction satire on what we now think of as reality TV, with Harvey Keitel as a reporter with a camera in his eye who films the last days of a dying woman, played by Romy Schneider.) The highlights of this 17-film series include Coup de Torchon (Thursday, June 23 and June 25), which transplants Jim Thompson to colonial Africa, and Round Midnight (June 23 and 29), perhaps Mr. Tavernier’s most famous film, starring Dexter Gordon as an alcoholic tenor saxophonist in 1959 Paris.
212-255-2243, quadcinema.com

[Chris Knipp]

Indiewire feature on the Melville oeuvre.

A 2015 Indiewire feature by Nikola Grozdanovic with Jessica Kiang, Nicholas Laskin and Rodrigo Perez about the "ten best" Jean-Pierre Melville films, spurred by the rerelease of Army of Shadows, relates Melville to the Nouvelle Vague and talks about the contrasts between various films. The piece has observations on how they relate to each other and Melville's place in the noir pantheon.

Note the summing up on Le Samouraï: "As a pure mood piece, Le Samourai is nothing short of intoxicating, like a dream with its own insistent and bizarre logic — one you don’t want to wake up from. It is uncluttered, bereft of unnecessary exposition, as lean and dangerous and unsentimental as its hero. Melville’s crime classic has gone on to influence countless other films, including Jim Jarmusch’s loving hip-hop pastiche “Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai,” Nicolas Winding Refn’s gory neo-noir “Drive” and practically every movie Michael Mann has ever made about a tortured badass who must adhere to a code of duty. And yet few of these subsequent films, as great as some of them are, can capture the majesty of this picture, which sees Melville operating at the peak of his powers. This is sinuous, powerful crime storytelling: as sharp as the edge of a switchblade, and just as deadly."