Jean Pierre Melville

Born in the French capital on October 20, 1917, Jean Pierre Grumbach –his real name– was born into an Alsatian family of Jewish origin. At the age of five they gave him a camera with which he filmed his family; Shortly after, he saw a movie about gangsters that made him fond of American cinema, to the point where he began to work, in various trades, as an assistant to a diamond dealer, or as a bellboy, he was continuously fired, apparently he went to see a movie forgetting about their chores.

During the Nazi occupation, he supported the resistance, testimonies indicate that he behaved heroically, risking his life, for example, he participated in the battle of Dunkirk. He was especially shocked by the death of his brother, a socialist militant, when he was fleeing from the invaders.

At that time he decided to change his last name to Melville, in homage to the author of “Moby Dick”. Rejected by the union of film technicians, apparently for political reasons that were not entirely clear, or he was considered a Germanophile, he decided to form his own production company, Melville Productions – eventually he would have his own studios, which would be destroyed in a fire. . He makes his feature film debut with the very interesting El silencio del mar, where an old man and his niece are forced to host a Nazi officer, who turns out to be affable. He works himself as a producer, scriptwriter, editor and editor, which led the critics at Cahiers du Cinéma to consider him a complete author. “I am convinced that your first film must be made with your own blood”, he affirmed, undoubtedly referring to the numerous autobiographical notes present in it, due to the conflict that had affected him so much.

In Los niños terribles,  he adapted a novel by Jean Cocteau , about a boy’s relationship with his protective sister, with whom he recreates a fantasy world. In his initial stage, which he himself described as a “search for a language”, he also filmed Quand tu liras cette lettre -about two sisters who are orphaned-, Bob the player -in which an old gangster prepares a hit on a casino–, and Two men in Manhattan –where he himself plays a journalist who investigates the hidden life of the French representative at the UN.

It marks a turning point in his filmography Leon Morin Priest , who finished consecrating him, where he has well-known actors, since Emmanuelle Riva plays a communist widow who is fascinated when an intelligent priest, played by Jean-Paul Belmondo , does not react as she hoped by criticizing religion.

He then shoots his best-known titles, El confidante –in which Belmondo repeats himself as a robber suspected of being a snitch–, Hasta el último breatho –with another great star of the moment, Lino Ventura , as a criminal escaped from jail–, The army of las sombras –with Ventura as the head of a resistance group escaping from the Nazis– and Red Circle –with his favorite actor and great friend, Alain Delon , as the organizer of a meticulous jewel robbery in one of the luxurious places on Place Vendôme–.

His great masterpiece is considered The Silence of a Man , where influenced by the best American film noir, he x-rays the loneliness of a mafia assassin, Jeff Costello (again Delon), who maintains an unstable relationship with a woman, but who he will end up besieged by both his own and the police, after murdering one of his targets. Rarely has a character been defined so well, Costello, with so few details and dialogues. The director’s meticulous, non-elliptical style reaches its peak in the legendary subway chase sequence, imitated time and time after.

The quote, with which the film begins, is also remembered: “There is no solitude more terrible than that of the samurai. Except, perhaps, the one about the tiger in the jungle”. These introductions to his films are another of his most curious hallmarks, since they summarize the essence of what is later exposed in the plot.

Did Jean-Pierre Melville himself suffer from the loneliness of his characters ? There was something of that; he married in 1952 with a woman named Florence Welsh, with whom he lived above his studies, but the marriage did not give rise to any children. To mitigate this void they adopted three cats.

I thought about the big screen all the time. “Even when I sleep I make movies,” she declared. Few directors have been such cinephiles, she was especially passionate about Hollywood cinema, better everything that can be classified as film noir. He bragged about watching five movies a day, in his own screening room in his house. “Less than five and you’d have withdrawal symptoms,” he said.

Considered the godfather of the Nouvelle Vague, there are many prestigious directors from around the world who consider him their favorite or one of their great influences. His legacy is traced to American filmmakers such as Martin Scorsese , Quentin Tarantino and above all Jim Jarmusch – who paid homage to him better than anyone in Ghost Dog, the way of the samurai –, Europeans such as Aki Kaurismäki and Asians such as Takeshi Kitano and John Woo .

He closes his filmography Crónica negra , from 1972, again with Delon, this time on the right side of the law, since he embodies a policeman, wilder than criminals, trapped between his duty and friendship. Despite his interest, it received mixed reviews and a poor reception at the box office. He died prematurely, on August 2, 1973, at the age of 55, when he suffered an acute myocardial infarction. He was preparing a new title, which he would have adapted “The Human Condition”, the novel by André Malraux .