Film Noir... with a French Twist.....

[Flitcraft]

If you're currently suffering from Noir withdrawls and you're looking for something with a little different flavor, I'd encourage you to see Bob le Flambeur,Le Samourai and Le Cercle Rouge- all directed by Jean-Pierre Melville.
Melville was a Frenchman with an affinity for all things American- including American Gangster and Detective Films. He adopted the surname "Melville" as an homage to the American author (his birthname was "Grumbach" so Melville was a definite trade up, and sounds French, too).

Melville's films are characterized by imaginative use of camera work to tell a story, the parcity of dialogue and the overall sense of fatalism inherent in their plot (sound familiar? Think of Burt Lancaster in The Killers- "Why do they want to kill you?" "I made a mistake- once...").

Melville's characters dress, act and even look like their sterotypical American Noir conterparts- but always a little different. Its this "difference" that makes these films intriguing to anyone with an interest in Film Noir and the Golden Age.
Criterion offers these titles on rather expensive DVDS, but I was able to find them at my local public library. They're all worth a look, but Bob le Flambeur is my favorite just because its a little imperfect- you can still see Melville trying to master his subject matter. Incidentally, this film was the inspiration for Hard Eight- a modern fim with noir sensiblities. Give them a look!

 

[Absinthe_1900]

Bob le Flambeur is a favorite of mine as well.

Great film!

 

[dr greg]

Ghrisbi...one of the best

I love this one, it's got Jean Gabin, (the French Bogart) in one of his greatest roles as the aging gangster, and a young Jeanne Moreau looking real good. The openness of the way they deal with drugs and sex is something you would NEVER see in a hollywood film of the time...it's a classic!
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0046451/

 

[Baron Kurtz]

Le Cercle Rouge ...

... is a great film.

bk

 

[Tony in Tarzana]

Netflix has Le Samourai and several others by Melville. I'll have to check 'em out!

 

[jake_fink]

Samouri has one of the best openings in film. I luvs it. (Je luvs c'est)

 

[Tomasso]

I love this one, it's got Jean Gabin, (the French Bogart) in one of his greatest roles as the aging gangster, and a young Jeanne Moreau looking real good.

Jean Gabin

Jeanne Moreau

 

[dr greg]

an early one

this looks nice 2

films with Moreau and Bardot, affair with Marlene, the guy had style. While I'm at it a plug for one of the greatest films of all time, not strictly noir, but never been equalled for dramatic tension through good direction

 

[Sefton]

All great Melville films! Don't forget this one called

Le Doulos(U.S. title: The Finger Man)

This 1962 Black and White film stars Jean-Paul Belmondo. Cops,jewel thieves,betrayal and deception,dark nights in empty train stations, and...murder French style!

 

[Undertow]

I loved Le Samourai!

And I just added Rififi to my watch list. Talk about nice looking hats and suits! And the stories are just excellent. I loved how sparse Le Samourai was.

 

[Wally_Hood]

Rififi is one of my favorites. It is tough, bleak, hardboiled, all the things that make noir noir. The characters do not come across as stereotypes, but are recognizable as the inhabitants of a noir universe.

 

[The Good]

I have yet to see any of the other films mentioned, but I have seen Le Samourai nearly a month ago. It is certainly a great film noir, and a good film in it's own right. I'm going to have to try to see some of the other works by Melville. I'm open to any recommendations on where to start after seeing Le Samourai, if anyone has one.

 

[Chasseur]

Grisby with Gabin and Moreau is about my favorite Golden Age film period. Wonderful film and so much more... earthy... than its American counter parts of the time.

Also with Moreau, "Elevator to the Gallows" is also well worth watching. "Rififi" is a good, solid heist film. Slightly earlier but fun is "Quai des Orfeves."

I love French cinema from the 1950s!

 

[Marjorian]

Melville and Gabin

I agree. Jean-Pierre Melville is a terrific director- one of my real favourites. His films noir are all excellent and he worked with most of the great French actors of his day. Alain Delon was one of his best regulars.

The movie I regard as his absolute best has not yet been mentioned. Its about the French Resistance (which Melville had experience of) and its called "L'Armee des Ombres" ("The Army in the Shadows"). It's a terrific piece with Simone Signoret and a bravura performance from Lino Ventura who's on screen virtually throughout. In fact when I recently compiled my Top 100 movies for my newspaper "L'Armee des Ombres" was No 1. That's how highly I rate it- my favourite film of all time.

Jean Gabin is of course another tremendous actor, maybe France's best ever film actor. I love Marcel Carne's "Quai Des Brumes" (a really stylish film made for Fedora Lounge Lizards) where Gabin is joined by one of the main rivals for my accolade- Michel Simon (just watch Renoir's "Boudu Saved From Drowning" and you'll see what a great actor Simon is).

Incidentally I don't regard Gabin as the French Bogart. To me Robert Mitchum is a better comparison- that quiet but menacing tough guy approach. Gabin also reminds me physically of another excellent American actor- Joel McCrea.

 

[Chasseur]

I almost forgot for fellow Jeanne Moreau fans, "The Lovers" is also well worth watching. Its not film noir, but an excellent early Louis Malle film that was considered quite racey in the US at the time.

 

[Talbot]

Checkout 'Le petit soldat' by Godard while you are at it. A bit late for some, 1963, but worth a look.

T

 

[Vilna]

Jean-Pierre Melville née Grumbach, was truly one of the great French directors. I would also like suggest the movie "Le deuxième souffle" about a doomed gangster played by Lino Ventura, and Paul Merisse as the suave police man. Both actors are superb.
Another real French noir is the movie produced during nazi-German occupation , "Le Courbeau" by George-Henri Clouzout. Set in a French provincial town riven by a campaign of poisoned letters, the action is centered around the local hospital. This masterpiece of a movie managed to antagonize almost all of French public opinion in the immediate post-war years. The Catholic Church, the communist party, the resistance, and even existentialists hated it, all for their own reasons. Partly because of this Clouzout was banned from directing for a few years after the war.

 

[Vilna]

"Rififi" was directed by the American Jules Dassin.