The French Polar

Jean-Pierre Melville fought in the Resistance, renamed himself after an American novelist, and then spent twenty years making crime films as quiet as church.

His gangsters wear trench coats and say almost nothing; his heists run for long minutes without a word; his Paris is grey, American, and half dream. He built his own studio to keep the world out, and shot one idea sharper and sharper for sixteen years, Bob le flambeur to Un Flic. Le Samouraï opened in 1967 with a hitman feeding his caged bird before a job, and half the crime cinema since is quoting it. His studio burned down while he was shooting it; he rebuilt what he needed, finished the picture, and never worked in anyone else’s house again.