L'ARMEE DES OMBRES

Jean-Pierre Melville

Jean-Pierre Melville, whose real name was Jean- Pierre Grumbach, became interested in films at a very young age. He neglected his secondary school studies and became a fan of the noir films and Hollywood detective movies that were to influence French polar films during the 1950s. He enlisted in 1937 and came into contact with the Resistance during WWII. He was arrested in Spain and after spending six months in prison joined the Forces Françaises Libres, adopting his code name, which would later become his pseudonym, in honor of the author Herman Melville. After returning to Paris in 1945 he played a small part in The Ladies of the Bois de Boulogne by Robert Bresson, a director who was destined to leave his stylistic mark on Melville’s opus. To facilitate his debut as a director, he founded his own production company,  Organisation Génerale Cinématographique, and made the short film Vingt-quatre heures de la vie d’un clown (1946). His first feature film, The Silence of the Sea (1949), which was shot on a shoestring budget, was based on the novel of the
same name by Vercours and is thought to have had a major influence on the directors of the Nouvelle Vague. The success of this film convinced Jean Cocteau to entrust Melville with the adaptation of his novel The Holy Terrors; the film, entitled The Strange Ones, was released in 1950. Determined to continue in independent productions, Melville bought a few hangars in Rue Jenner and transformed them into a film studio. After When You Read This Letter (1953), he directed his first noir film, Bob the Gambler (1956), followed in 1959 by Two Men in Manhattan. That same year
he portrayed the author Parvulesco in Breathless by Jean-Luc Godard. In 1961 he shot Leon Morin, Priest with Jean-Paul Belmondo, who also starred in his film Doulos: The Finger Man in 1963. In the same year he directed An Honorable Young Man,
based on a novel by Simenon. In 1966 Lino Ventura starred in Second Breath, based on the detective story of the same name by José Giovanni. In 1967, shortly after releasing the film The Godson, which marked the beginning of his professional partnership with Alain Delon, a fire destroyed the film studios in Rue Jenner. Despite this economic setback, Melville was able to direct Army in the Shadows (1969),
a war film based on autobiographical reminiscences of the Resistance. In 1970 he returned to polar films with The Red Circle and in 1972 he made his last film, Dirty Money. He began working on the screenplay of his fifteenth film in 1973, but he died
of a heart attack in August of that same year.

FILMOGRAFIA

Vingt-quatre heures de la vie d’un clown (cm, doc., 1946), Le Silence de la mer (Il silenzio del mare, 1949), Les Enfant terribles (I ragazzi terribili, 1950), Quand tu lira cette lettre (Labbra proibite, 1953), Bob le flambeur (Bob il giocatore, 1956), Deux hommes dans Manhattan (Le jene del quarto potere, 1959), Léon Morin, prêtre (Leon Morin, prete - La carne e l’anima, 1961), Le Doulos (Lo spione, 1963), L’Aîné des ferchaux (Lo sciacallo, 1963), Le Deuxième souffle (Tutte le ore feriscono, l’ultima uccide!, 1966), Le Samouraï (Frank Costello faccia d’angelo, 1967), L’Armèe des ombres (L’armata degli eroi, 1969), Le Cercle rouge (I senza nome, 1970), Un Flic (Notte sulla città, 1972).