Cycles

Jean-Pierre Melville

2023 : cinquantenaire de sa mort

6 films

En aout 1973, il y a 50 ans, disparaissait Jean-Pierre Grumbach alias Melville, l’un des grands cinéastes du XXème siècle. En quatorze films seulement et vingt-cinq ans de carrière, Jean-Pierre Melville est devenu une légende internationale. Ses films ont marqué profondément les jeunes cinéastes de la « Nouvelle Vague ». Il a également exercé durablement son influence sur des cinéastes majeurs, son écriture et son style visuel entre autres ayant inspiré de nombreux réalisateurs américains comme Quentin Tarantino, Michael Mann ou encore Jim Jarmusch. 2023 est l'occasion de lui rendre hommage et de (re)découvrir son oeuvre en 7 films.

Jean-Pierre Melville
  • Literary adaptation, Drama, Classics
  • 1961
  • France
  • 2h10
  • expired rights
by Jean-Pierre Melville

In a small French town during the Occupation, Barny (Riva)is a young, wayward, sexually frustrated widow, living with her little girl. She is also a communist militant who long ago decided that the easiest way was the best. One day she enters a church, randomly chooses a priest (Belmondo) to confess to and, while in confessional, attempts to provoke him by criticizing Catholicism. Instead of being affronted, the priest engages her in an intellectual discussion regarding religion. The priest is Leon Morin, young, handsome, smart and altruistic. He invites Barny to continue the conversation outside of confessional. She begins regularly seeing him and is impressed by his moral strength, while he makes it his mission to steer her onto the right path.

  • Literary adaptation, Drama, Classics
  • 1949
  • France
  • 1h28
  • expired rights
by Jean-Pierre Melville

In a small town in occupied France in 1941, the German officer, Werner Von Ebrennac is billeted in the house of the uncle and his niece. The uncle and niece refuse to speak to him, but each evening the officer warms himself by the fire and talks of his country, his music, and his idealistic views of the relationship between France and Germany. That is, until he visits Paris and discovers what is really going on...

  • Drama, Classics
  • 1970
  • France
  • 2h30
  • expired rights
by Jean-Pierre Melville

Corey is a cool, aristocratic thief, released from prison on the same day that Vogel, a murderer, escapes from the custody of the patient Mattei, a cat-loving police superintendent. Corey robs Rico, his mob boss, then enlists Vogel and an ex-police sharpshooter, Jansen, in a jewel heist. While Corey is harried by the vengeful Rico, Mattei pressures Santi, a nightclub owner and pimp, to help him trap the thieves. Over all hangs the judgment of the police directeur, that every man is guilty.

  • Thriller, Literary adaptation, Classics
  • 1961
  • France
  • 1h50
  • expired rights
by Jean-Pierre Melville

Le Doulos begins by introducing us to Maurice, an ex-con, just released from prison after serving a six-year sentence. He then murders his friend, Gilbert, and steals the jewels he had been hiding, products of a recent heist. Shortly afterwards, Maurice plans a heist of a rich man’s estate and shares his plan with Silien, who is rumored to be a police informant. Silien is later picked up and questioned by the police. The film unfolds from there, incorporating a number of plot twists revealed through Melville’s traditionally styled hard-boiled dialogue and picturesque visuals.

  • Literary adaptation, Drama, Classics
  • 1969
  • France
  • 2h30
  • expired rights
by Jean-Pierre Melville

France, 1942, during the occupation. Philippe Gerbier, a civil engineer, is one of the French Resistance's chiefs. Given away by a traitor, he is interned in a camp. He manages to escape, and joins his network at Marseilles, where he makes the traitor be executed... This non-spectacular movie (do not expect any Rambo or Robin Hood) shows us rigorously and austerely the everyday of the French Resistants : their solitude, their fears, their relationships, the arrests, the forwarding of orders and their carrying out... Both writer Joseph Kessel and co-writer and director Jean-Pierre Melville belonged to this "Army in the Shadows".

  • Drama, Classics
  • 1955
  • France
  • 1h44
  • expired rights
by Jean-Pierre Melville

In Paris's Montmartre district, everyone knows Bob, a well-dressed compulsive gambler. He's generous, moralistic, drives a two-toned convertible coupe, lives in a swank apartment, and has the respect of the police. But he's on a losing streak, and even when he hits it big at the track, he loses at the Deauville casino. When he learns that the casino keeps a fortune on Grand Prix weekend, he plots a robbery. Subplots trace a seemingly innocent coquette's social climb and the greed of a croupier's wife who betrays the thieves.

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