Taking in a career that encompassed wartime dramas – Melville fought in the French army and then in the Resistance – and a Cocteau collaboration, Jean-Pierre Melville is one of the most admired figures in post-war French cinema.
Briefly a figurehead for the French New Wave before deciding to go his own way, Melville maintained an incredible independence by establishing his own studios. An admirer of American popular culture, he is perhaps best remembered f or the superlative, meticulously executed, existential crime dramas he produced in the 1960s. The season, in collaboration with BFI Southbank, will offer new restorations of many of the filmmaker’s finest works.
Previously in this season
Cinema
Le Cercle Rouge
Jean-Pierre Melville's noir classic re released in a restored version.
Cinema
Bob le flambeur
Suffused with wry humor, Bob le flambeur melds the toughness of American gangster films with Gallic sophistication to lay the road map for the French New…
Cinema
The Army of Shadows
Jean-Pierre Melville's classic, doom-laden WWII Resistance drama.
Cinema
Le Deuxieme Souffle
With his customary restraint and ruthless attention to detail, Melville follows the parallel tracks of French underworld criminal Gu - escaped from prison and roped…
