L' armée des ombres (1969) - Jean-Pierre Melville

Right from the opening image of a troop of Nazis jackbooting their way down the Champs-Élysées, the impotent image of the Arc de Triomphe looming large behind them, it’s obvious that Jean-Pierre Melville’s salute to the French Resistance isn’t going to be shot through any sort of rose tinted lens. Just as it feels the Nazis are about to march off the screen and into the audience Melville freezes the frame and the film proper begins. Éric Demarsan’s slowly descending piano notes chime out over a rainswept murky country landscape. Cutting through the scenery is a prison van transporting Philippe Gerbier (Lino Ventura) to a prisoner of war camp. Gerbier is a leader of a small French Resistance cell operating out of Marseille. Melville kicks L' armée des ombres off as he means to go on, it’s all very gloomy minor key stuff. Ventura’s hangdog features hint at defeat whilst his eyes and mannerisms convey anything but.

L' armée des ombres was adapted from Joseph Kessel's book of the same name. Rather than going for a straight ahead narrative Melville instead opts for a series of vignettes. Which at first seem unrelated but later become more and more intricate. One of Melville’s genius touches is the way he introduces each new character through someone we have already met, so for instance after our introduction to Gerbier has played out, we cut to a new scene with a new character - Félix Lepercq (Paul Crauchet) sitting in a car with Gerbier, then through Félix we meet Jean-François Jardie (Jean-Pierre Cassel), who in turn introduces the audience to Mathilde (Simone Signoret) and so on. It works very much in the same way as the faction in the film does, very clever. Very Melville.

Jean-Pierre Melville only really made two types of films during his short career - gangster flicks and war films, or more accurately films set during the German occupation of France during WWII. Melville was an active member of the resistance during WWII, and this comes across in spades in L' armée des ombres with it’s myriad of interlocking stories and characters. There’s a huge attention to detail that runs throughout the film as well as Melville’s fixation with methodical storytelling. No Nouvelle Vague jump cuts for Melville, far better to almost have things play out in real time. This of course makes scenes seem more real, such as the execution of a resistance member who has betrayed the cause. When you know the camera isn't going to look away, it becomes just that little too real.

Visually there is no mistaking that L' armée des ombres is a film by Jean-Pierre Melville. The washed out green, grey and blue colour pallet, the distressed set design it all screams Melville. Likewise the stilted almost mannequin acting style so favoured by the great man is on display here too. Melville drags stunning performances out of his actors, Simone Signoret is wonderful in one of the few strong female roles in Melville’s filmography. Just check out the look on her face during her last moments on screen. The real star of the film though is Lino Ventura, who gives one of the most understated performances of his career despite the fact that his relationship with Melville had become so bad during the filming, that they had stopped talking directly to each other.

One of the glories of L' armée des ombres is despite the sombre almost melancholy air that hangs over it, it has the sort of set piece action scenes that would have singled Melville out as a future Bond director. There are numerous prison breaks, assassinations and the like. Yet just like his gangster films these scenes never unbalance the film. He builds tension to almost uncomfortable points at times, such as the attemt to rescue Félix from his cell. Good stuff.

L' armée des ombres falls right slap bang in the middle of Melville’s greatest run of films, which started with Le deuxième souffle (1966), continued with Le samouraï (1967) and concluded with Le cercle rouge (1970). For various reasons L' armée des ombres failed to ignite the French box office, and was mauled by the critics for being out of touch with the cinema of the day. After all it arrived just a year after the ’68 student riots in Paris. Vietnam was on everybody’s mind and a film about events from a quarter of a century before must have just felt old hat. It never even received an American release until 2005, but is now seen as one of Melville’s masterpieces and probably his most personal film. Everybody owes it to themselves to see this.

Le Samouraï (1967) - Jean-Pierre Melville

 Jef Costello (Alain Delon) is an assassin, the sort of guy you shouldn't really double cross. So when after a successful job Jef is pulled in for questioning by the law, his employers decided that he's a liability and decided to off him. They botch the job, and now Jef is out after blood. If you read that synopsis on the back of the DVD, would it make you watch this? I'd probably stick it back on the shelf thinking that I've seen that film a few hundred times before. Yet Melville, like all great directors is able to take a familiar yarn and turn it on it's head, creating something entirely original and recognisably his.

Le Samouraï is unmistakeably Melville, containing as it does several of the directors trademarks. For a start before anything happens we are presented with a hokey quote, supposedly from some ancient samurai text, but of course being straight from Melville's pen. Then there are the Melville staples - the doomed loner character (Jef), the huge American car (Valérie's), Jef's white gloves and long hard gaze into the mirror at the start of the film. All of these things appear again and again in JPM's films. Even the staircase in Jef's building turns up a number of times in his flicks.

By '67 Melville had well established his film language, all muted washed out colours (usually greys and pale blues) and sets that had a more than run down appearance. His characters always dress to the nines with police and gangsters adopting the same dress code, that of trench coats and trilby hats. Something that is touched upon in the scene where Delon is told to stand in a line up amongst other policemen, all of whom are told to put on their coats and hats, of course they all look like gangsters, or is that policemen? Then there's Melville's meticulous eye for detail and his relish at showing the audience the minutest details of the most mundane things. In Le Samouraï we are very carefully shown exactly how Jef sets up his alibi and walked through how the police plant a bug for example. Sometimes these scenes almost feel as if they are shot in real time, although of course they aren't. The weird thing is that despite this obsession with detail, his characters don't appear to breathe the same air as us. His world is a few steps removed from ours, for example when Jef (twice) steals a car he does so in broad daylight by simply walking up to it, opening the door (unlocked!!), then using the huge ring of keys that he carries around with him, he slowly and methodically works his way through key after key until finding the one that will start the car. Interestingly a similar scene is to be found when the police break into Jef's apartment using the same massive bunch of keys.

As I said Melville's world is like ours but slightly different. It's almost fantasy like, when Jef shoots his victims, both times you see Jef taking his white gloved hands out of his trench coat pockets, he isn't holding a gun, then we cut to the victim who has pulled a gun and quickly goes to pull the trigger, however quite unbelievably Jef manages to outdraw them. As I said it's Melville's world as much as when you watch Play Time it's Tati's.

Melville worked almost exclusively in two genres throughout his career, those being crime and resistance films. This isn't my favourite of his crime films (Le Cercle rouge just pips it, just), but it's still a masterpiece. There is just so much to enjoy about this film, such as the wonderfully cold performance from Delon. He's almost like a mannequin, he hardly talks during the film (in fact there is no dialogue at all for the first ten minutes), and when he does it's very spartan, with almost no emotion detectable. The room he lives in is a reflection of him, only the barest essentials are on display, water and cigarettes are stacked neatly on top of a wardrobe, a bed pushed against one wall the chest of drawers empty. The caged bird that Jef keeps is an obvious metaphor for Jef, who as far as we see has no companions, no love, nothing. Delon is often framed entirely alone, frozen out from the rest of the people that populate the film. There is more to say, but I just feel that I'm wittering on, I haven't mentioned the use of Kurosawa style wipes in the editing or even the great fetishistic way Jef is with his hat, let alone any sort of discussion about how perfect the end of the film is (hint think about the title). The thing is there has to be some stuff for you to discover for yourself, you don't want me telling you everything now do you?

Le Doulos (1962) - Jean-Pierre Melville

There were a couple of bits of graffiti that I'll never forget from back when I was a nipper. In fact so old were they that they were done with white paint and a paint brush. Not quite Banksy. The first was off of Southend high street and declared 'Neil Queen* is a supergrass', the second was in Wickford and said 'Watkins** is a coppers nark'. Now God alone knows why they have both stuck in my head, but they have. What's this got to do with Le Doulos? Well Doulos is French slang for a grass, maybe somewhere in Marseilles there is a guy in his late thirties writing about remembering Doulos being badly painted on a wall. Well perhaps not.

Anyway as you probably already know Jean-Pierre Melville only really made two kinds of films, WWII French resistance flicks and crime capers. This one falls neatly into the later category, what with it being about robberies and the naughty types that do that sort of thing. The big question that runs through the film is, who is the police informant? The set up is simple and the mid film reveal is a stroke of genius. It's one of those moments where you realise that the director has pulled the wool over your eyes. It'll have you wanting to rewatch it again ASAP, just so you can say to yourself that you saw it coming a mile off.

Jean-Paul Belmondo plays his usual brash, treat the girls like shit they love that sort of thing character, Serge Reggiani as always is far more understated, and for me at least is the real star of the film. He appears to not do much, but conveys far more emotion with just one glance than Belmondo manages with his mugging to the camera style of acting. As per usual in a Melville film the female characters (of which there are only three) are very two dimensional. They only exist as an extension of their male counterpoints. I don't think Melville is quite the misogynist that critics have labeled him, he just made films about relationships between men. Plain and simple. It's just that sometimes you have to put a dame in there too.

There are a few things to look out for in Melville's crime films, some obvious some less so. So let's start with the simple ones. Hats, if you're not wearing a hat, you're not in the film, same goes for trench coats. Then there are the huge American cars that all the bad boys drive, they look so out of place when they have to park up next to some little fart box Citroën. But then Melville's Paris is like something out of Sapphire & Steel, a kind of parallel Paris that is twinned with Chicago. Then come the smaller things, white gloves for instance, the top boy always has white gloves. The lead characters looking at their reflection in a mirror, is another. All of these things are in Le Doulos, if they weren't then you wouldn't be watching a Melville film.

Of course there is a lot more to Le Doulos than that, for starters there is a fantastically shocking scene between Belmondo and Monique Hennessy, and enough little twists to keep things moving along at a decent pace. Oh and a lovely long tracking sequence during the main titles. There is one other thing that always happens during Melville's police and thieves films, and that is how they end. Now I'm not going to give anything away here, but I'll just say they always have the same ending. If you haven't seen this, then you really should if you are a fan of this sort of thing. Things got a whole lot better for JPM after this, and his genius years were just around the corner. I've convinced myself whilst writing this that I really need to rewatch them all. Happy days.


*I can't remember the actual name and have substituted a friends name instead.
**Same story here as the one above. As far as I'm aware neither Haydn Watkins or Neil Queen have grassed anyone up, only time will tell though.