The Criterion Collection

[spargs]

Originally Posted by SeanJoyce

Anybody care to chat Melville? Every once in a while I get into a 50s/60s French crime cinema fugue with a particular focus on his contributions, and I thank the movie gods for him. He died prematurely and didn't exactly have a robust output compared to other filmmakers (14), but it's difficult to argue that he didn't make all of them count.

Army of Shadows and Le Cercle Rouge are two of the jewels of my collection; they're two OOP titles I'm most grateful to own. While some consider the former his masterpiece because of his personal involvement in the Resistance, to me Le Cercle Rouge is his "white wale"...the apotheosis of his special brand of American-styled gangster existentialism. He claimed that he was originally supposed to direct Rififi, and you can almost sense him trying to "outdo" that classic with the stunning jewelry store heist.

And while we're on it, going through them, I'm amazed at the density of the booklets that come with either release...perhaps it's a sad reflection of Criterion's lowering standards, but these things elevate great packages to something special.

While I'm ecstatic that Kino was able to get several of his other movies to the states in HD, I'm a bit peeved that they just weren't given back to Criterion. The OCD-collector in me is finding it difficult to part with the (excellent) Criterion discs, with exclusive extras, and the lack of uniformity is irksome. But ah well, first world problems.

I really hope that Criterion revisits Le Deuxieme Souffle and gives us Magnet of Doom (one of only two Melville movies I haven't seen.)

Melville is probably the favorite director discovery of mine since I really began delving further into the Criterion Collection some 7-8 years ago.

[Ray Jackson]

Le Samourai has arguably the best music of any film in the Collection.

And Alain Delon was prettier than most women.

I always said if I had to sleep with a guy...if my life depended on it...I’d sleep with Alain Delon.

[SeanJoyce]

Glad to see all of the unabashed love for Melville (not that I doubted there'd be any, in this thread of all places.) Not only did he have a seismic influence on the New Wave, but the careers of Johnny To, John Wood, Michael Mann and Quentin Tarantino would have been radically different without him. $hit, even one of Walter Hill's best movies (The Driver) is a pseudo-remake of Le Samourai.

I think it's cool that despite being the poster child for European gangster films, Melville is also responsible for a poignant and trenchant "trilogy" of sorts about the French Resistance which he, as is widely known, was a valorous participant in. Army of Shadows has had its praises sung quite a bit so far (and with good reason; the opening German march in front of the Arc de Triomphe alone is one of the most bravura sequences ever filmed, and the ending pulverizes you), but Le Silence de la Mer is one of the great debuts for any filmmaker. Melville made it on the fly and practically destitute while promising a panel of Resistance fighters, including the author, that he would destroy all of the negatives if they didn't unanimously like it. The balls it takes to make a film under those conditions have to come from granite. And while it's mostly relegated to the background, the Resistance is always a specter in the psychological and psychosexual encounters between Belmondo and Riva that form the meat of Leon Morin, Priest.

I'd welcome a blu-ray upgrade of Les Enfants Terribles, even if it's a bizarre and cacophonous tennis match between Melville and Cocteau's polar opposite sensibilities as artists. Truffaut calling it Melville's greatest film is a real head-scratcher, to say the least.

Finally, if you haven't seen it, Two Men in Manhattan is an odd but enjoyable valentine to American film noir, with Melville assuming co-lead duties. I appreciate Cohen for putting it out there for his fans.

[SeanJoyce]

Originally Posted by Ray Jackson

Le Samourai has arguably the best music of any film in the Collection.

And Alain Delon was prettier than most women.

I always said if I had to sleep with a guy...if my life depended on it...I’d sleep with Alain Delon.

I read a review of Le Samourai that likened Delon to a male supermodel gone rogue, who instead of relying upon his, ahem, tool, found a gun more useful.

I dug that analogy.

[bipbop13]

All right. I finally got to watch "The Virgin Spring". Now everyone can hate me for giving it a 6/10 & liking "Last House on the Left" Better. I really didn't go for the religious themes throughout the original, though I can understand why they are there. I do enjoy Max as an actor very much, and he really saves this for me. I do have one question. The men give the lady of the house the dress that unknowingly to them belongs to her daughter. Then the crying, anger, killing, etc. take place. Is it ever revealed if these killers are told why they're being done in? I can't remember in "House" either if its explicitly mentioned. If not, that would be 2 couples that I'd never give gifts to!

[The Great Owl]

I shared my review of Terrence Malick's A Hidden Life in the Movies sub-forum. it's my favorite film of 2019.

If you have a chance to see this one on a big theater screen, then you absolutely must.

This film is Criterion-worthy, but I also believe that it would be a shame not to have it see the light of day on a 4K UHD disc.

[AaronJ]

Originally Posted by bipbop13

All right. I finally got to watch "The Virgin Spring". Now everyone can hate me for giving it a 6/10 & liking "Last House on the Left" Better. I really didn't go for the religious themes throughout the original, though I can understand why they are there. I do enjoy Max as an actor very much, and he really saves this for me. I do have one question. The men give the lady of the house the dress that unknowingly to them belongs to her daughter. Then the crying, anger, killing, etc. take place. Is it ever revealed if these killers are told why they're being done in? I can't remember in "House" either if its explicitly mentioned. If not, that would be 2 couples that I'd never give gifts to!

I don't think it's explained. Not explicitly, anyway. Then again, my memory is like a sieve.

As to your opinion on the two films, while I disagree with you as to which one is the better film, it's also damn good to see people supporting Craven's film. I believe, and have believed for a long while actually, that it gets tossed to the side often just because Craven made it, and people are incredibly unfamiliar with his work. They have a specific idea of everything he was capable of, and they just attach that idea to any of his work. Seen. Unseen. Doesn't matter.

Craven's film was raw and effecting and extremely uncomfortable (to say the least). It's dismissed far too often, far too easily.

[ShellOilJunior]

Originally Posted by bipbop13

Is it ever revealed if these killers are told why they're being done in?

No. It's not necessary. As viewers we know the reason so there's no need to explain what we've seen.

[theater dreamer]

With all this love being shown to Melville, I think it’s time to unwrap my OOP Army or Shadow, and finally give it a watch tonight.

And damn, you all aren’t kidding about the size of the booklet with this.

[KubrickKurasawa]

Originally Posted by johnvand

Anyone watch their criterion’s on a 65”4k oled? Looking to upgrade to a larger display and wondering how they hold up.

i FIND THE ONE' FROM A 4K SOURCE ARE OBVIOUSLY THE BEST. tHE 2KS DON'T IMPRESS ME. 65" Full Array. Sony X1 proc.

[SeanJoyce]

Originally Posted by theater dreamer

With all this love being shown to Melville, I think it’s time to unwrap my OOP Army or Shadow, and finally give it a watch tonight.

And damn, you all aren’t kidding about the size of the booklet with this.

Lol I was the only one who mentioned the booklet, but it's just one brick in the wall of reputation that Criterion has built over the years as the most esteemed boutique label.

Funnily enough, my recent viewing of Army of Shadows came only after I unwrapped my copy that I've kept sealed all the way back to '13. After selling a duplicate copy last winter for nearly double what I paid for it, I viewed it as owning one of Criterion's most important releases for only a few bucks...breaking the seal was a long time coming.

[Aclea]

I'll bite. At inordinate length...



Spoilers ahoy:

"I bid you goodnight."

Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Silence de la Mer now seems an atypical work in light of his later, more widely-known gangster films, but this 1949 adaptation of Vercors’ hugely popular WW2 novella can lay claim to having influenced both Robert Bresson and the Nouvelle Vague filmmakers both in terms of its style and its production. The book was written under an assumed name by Jean Bruller and published by a (literal) French underground press who also printed death notices for the Nazis during the Occupation, and it’s a surprising work to have been written during the war, not demonising its central German character but rather making a kind of plea for understanding – but not understanding the enemy, rather making him understand why even his best and idealistic assumptions are so wrong.

The story is simplicity itself: Howard Vernon’s German officer is billeted at a French farmhouse where the owner (Jean-Marie Robain) and his niece (Nicole Stéphane) resist in the only way they can – by refusing to say a single word to him. Introduced as a figure out of a horror film yet transformed in the same shot into a less threatening figure the moment he crosses their hearth, he’s not a stereotypical Nazi thug, but rather a more sensitive and naively idealistic figure. Soft spoken and polite, he never imposes his will on his reluctant hosts but rather tries to win them over through conversation, never losing his temper at their refusal to respond like a patient suitor. He dreams of a marriage between Germany and France that will take both nations to a higher level, achieving through the reluctant use of force what pre-war politicians failed to do with diplomacy. He doesn’t want an empty conquest but, rather, wants France to come willingly to its embrace. He sees the Occupation in terms of Beauty and the Beast, with the proud Beauty destined through time to see that the ill-mannered Beast is not nearly so brutal as it appears. He even admires their silence, taking it as a sign that France is not some easily won over craven coward but rather worthy of Germany’s attentions and the effort to woo her to its side. Yet after an ill-fated trip to Paris it is their silence that ultimately wins him over to the realization that the Beast is far worse than he imagined, a rapacious, soulless figure without redemption, eating away at his idealism with the same ingrained contempt with which it destroys the culture and character of those it conquers.



The film itself had a bizarre history: refusing to sell the screen rights, Vercors eventually agreed to allow Melville to shoot the film after the director promised to submit it to a jury of prominent resistance figures and destroy the negative if any were opposed to the finished film being shown. Made completely outside the studio system over a period of months as and when he could raise the money and film stock for a few days shooting, shot with a non-union crew and going through two cinematographers (Luc Mirot and André Vilar) who objected to Melville’s unconventional lighting requests before striking lucky with Henri Decae (making his first fictional feature after working in documentaries), and filmed in Vercors’ house in the very same room the author had shared with the real German officer who inspired the story, in many ways it’s an exemplary no-budget film, a virtual three-hander that makes a virtue of its economy, although it’s not a perfect one. There is far too much narration at times, particularly in the early scenes where what we can see is constantly described (Ginette Vincendeau makes a particularly unconvincing argument that this isn’t the case simply because there could have been even more narration in the booklet accompanying the DVD) and the relationship with the niece isn’t particularly well-handled: there’s little sense in Nicole Stéphane’s performance that she’s trying to hold emotions back, and even small moments like her missing a stitch at a crucial moment in one of Vernon’s monologues seems muffed in the execution.

Yet the strengths outweigh the limitations. The situation is a compelling one, the act of passive resistance more intriguing than the more conventional heroics of resistance cinema, and the minimalist treatment is often fascinating. In many ways the film is a bridge between the classic tradition of quality style of pre-War French cinema while heralding a more adventurous and stylised approach, with Henri Decae’s often strikingly modern cinematography giving notice of why he would become one of the great cinematographers of French cinema with films like The 400 Blows, Lift to the Scaffold, Plein Soleil and several more collaborations with Melville such as Le Samourai and Le Cercle Rouge. Indeed, Decae’s importance to the film cannot be underestimated: as well as being willing to experiment and at once be ‘anti-cinematographic’ yet ‘classical’ as Melville demanded (or to risk the film “looking like crap” as Mirot allegedly put it) he would even work on the post-production and editing of the film alongside Melville. To those unfamiliar with Melville’s early work it’s a world away from his later crime films (although a brief prologue with resistants exchanging a suitcase with copies of the book on a street corner offers a hint of what was to come), and it’s not as powerful or accomplished as his masterpiece L’Armee des Ombres, but it’s still a remarkably assured and accomplished debut.

Although it has to be said that the film works better on the big screen than the small one, the Eureka Masters of Cinema disc is absolutely stunning quality: not only is it better than any of the theatrical prints available for years or Waterbearer’s NTSC video release but, considering the technical problems that plagued its production, probably looks better now than it did in 1949.

[Aclea]

And my personal favorite Melville since seeing it in a Melville retrospective in 2003, and one I've bought in multiple editions (BFI, Criterion, StudioCanal) over the years:



L’Armée des Ombres was for years not nearly as well-known as it deserves to be, incredibly difficult to track down unless you spoke French and even then only available in poor copies. Overshadowed by the reputations of Le Samourai, Le Cercle Rouge and Bob le Flambeur, it’s by far Jean-Pierre Melville’s most heartfelt and powerful film. The resistance is as much a part of Melville as cinema – Melville was one of the false names he used during the war – and this is a film that feels as if it has been lived by the people making it: it’s not so much a tribute as a confession of guilt. Although the gangster parallels are there, it’s not an affectation: after the war, many resistance figures famously put their newly learned talents to use by either going into crime or politics. Melville went into movies.

His protagonists aren’t action heroes. They don’t blow up trains or bridges. They deliver radios and spend more time killing each other than killing Germans. Indeed, the film’s four month timespan from October 1942 to February 1943 covers a moral journey that sees them go from killing traitors to killing friends. Many of their plans fail, their gestures often futile as it becomes clear that these people will never live to see the liberation – something brought tragically to light in the film’s final moments that carry a real emotional punch absent in Melville’s other work. The final image of the Arc de Triomphe glimpsed furtively through the windscreen of a car hurrying away from the murder of a friend is a solemn and bitter one: this is the human cost of victory. (The sequence originally ended with a shot of German troops parading down the Champs Elysee, emphasizing that nothing has changed, but the shot was moved to the opening of the film, acting both as historical scene-setter and leitmotif bookend.)

These people are afraid and ashamed, but that’s what makes them so truly heroic and their inevitable fate so truly tragic. They don’t need speeches or backstory – they are ennobled by their actions, futile or not.

Irony abounds. In the opening scenes, Lino Ventura’s civil engineer and suspected resistance fighter is sent to a barely finished P.O.W. camp built by the French for German prisoners they never got the chance to capture and is now the exclusive domain of patriots, communists and fools waiting ‘to be broken.’ Jean-Pierre Cassel, having eluded Nazi search parties, is stopped by gendarmes on the lookout for black market goods who ignore the radio transmitters he openly and casually shows them before waving him on his way. Even capture is as likely to come from a random identity check at a restaurant serving black market beef as it is from an informer.

It’s the kind of film that gives low-key moviemaking a good name. As the film’s composer Eric Demarsan noted, “I was struck by the strength of the silences, the looks, the waiting moments.” Along with a great use of locations that are deliberately empty to emphasise the loneliness of the life they find themselves in, there’s a wonderful use of sound and stillness: a daring attempt to rescue one of their number from an SS prison is played mostly in silence interrupted only by the constant clicking and unclicking of automated locks. When one character is seized, it is so quick and so silent that it is over almost before we know it, with only his signature hat left in the street to show he was ever there. The only ‘big’ moment in the score is the use of Morton Gould’s Re-Spirituals in the build-up to the chicken-run scene, underscoring Gerbier’s desperate mental efforts to avoid death by an act of will. It sounds melodramatic, but it works, not least because of the sudden violence of the silence that ends it, heralding the end of hope.



Nothing feels sensationalized. Even murder is treated in a coldly matter of fact manner as a practical problem as much as a moral one. You have to kill a man, but you can’t use a gun because the walls are paper-thin and it will alert the neighbors. What do you do? How do you rationalize killing a friend? And at what cost? All become more disturbing because they feel all-too real.

Some of the special effects are primitive even for their day, but it doesn’t matter: you forgive them because you buy into the characters and the reality of their situation absolutely. And although the London sequences have problems, not least the embarrassingly Christ-like approach to filming De Gaulle, they are an interesting inversion of the French scenes. Here the war is fought noisily and openly with air raids and burning buildings, yet the traditionally repressed British still let their hair down – something Gerbier (Lino Ventura), having lived in secret for so long, cannot. He is left alone at the door to a pub, unable to join in, quietly leaving before anyone even notices him. In France, the war is fought in silence and in shadows, and it is the French who repress their every emotion. One character is even unable to confide in his own brother, completely unaware that his sibling is actually the head of his resistance group.

Even the smallest characters are splendidly drawn, from the gendarme accompanying Gerbier to the prison camp to Serge Reggiani’s great matter-of-fact cameo as a barber who displays Vichy posters but holds De Gaullist sympathies. The film is so well cast that you believe in these people on sight. But quietly towering over them all is Ventura in his best performance, with a warmth that is not overt but still there, as well as a weakness – his shame at running at the behest of a sadistic German officer is all too convincing. Indeed, for all the undoubted right of their cause, the unifying feature of the main characters is their growing sense of shame.

Sobering, powerful and very moving – with the only one of Melville’s pre-destined endings that is, offering no resolution, only damnation and the promise of death – L’Armee des Ombres is a genuine tragedy.

(Incidentally, the English dialogue is by Howard Vernon, the star of Melville’s first feature La Silence de la Mer.)

[Aclea]

And the one I wasn't that taken with...



Jean-Pierre Melville’s adaptation of José Giovanni’s Deuxieme Souffle is a classic example of a good story badly told. Running two-and-a-half hours and feeling even longer at times, this story of Lino Ventura’s escaped convict getting disastrously mixed up in the proverbial one last job to set him up with enough money to escape to Sicily is not exactly a model of narrative economy as the exposition heavy first two hours are filled with characters speculating at length on scenes we’ve just seen without ever shining any new light on them. Initially this works surprisingly well as Paul Meurisse’s casually brilliant been-there, done-that cop, the real star of the show, explains exactly the story various witnesses will tell at a crime scene for them to save the trouble of interrogating them, but increasingly it just becomes repetitive and slows the picture down to a surprisingly dull crawl. It’s not until the last quarter that the film finally threatens to kick start into life as Ventura is tricked into revealing the identity of one of his cohorts and tries desperately to prove that he’s no stoolpigeon with both the cops and the gang after his blood. His obsession proving that he’s not a collaborator certainly may have had some wartime resonance for a French audience, but more up to date references were left on the cutting from floor thanks to the notorious French censor cuts that saw a police torture scene cut to almost incomprehensibility to remove shots of a suspect being force fed water, a favorite torture technique of the French paratroops and police in Algeria.

That the film’s most notorious scene isn’t actually in the picture any more is telling for a film that plays better in the memory than while you’re actually watching it. While there are occasional hints of Melville’s better pictures – those omnipresent trenchcoats and hats, the opening prison break played out in silence, a railway station shot anticipating one in L’Armee des Ombres – it’s a distinctly minor film padded out to an epic length it never justifies. There are the odd moments that intrigue, such as one character rehearsing the ways a meeting can go wrong to know where to stash hidden weapons only for one of the hoods he’s meeting to do exactly the same thing, but they rarely pay off, while the characters on the wrong side of the law are never quite iconic enough to carry the film over the rough patches. Only Pierre Zimmer’s Orloff is particularly admirable, but he’s more a facilitator than a protagonist, accurately described by one character, as “all style, no action.” While the line might seem a suitable description for Melville, the film isn’t that stylish either: with no Henri Decae or Nicholas Hayer behind the lens this time (Marcel Combes was the cinematographer) it often looks no better than the average French polar of the era. It’s the kind of film that could certainly benefit from a good remake with a tighter script. Talking of which...



French director Alain Corneau spent so much of his latter career making mood and character pieces that don’t really go anywhere that it’s all too easy to forget he started out making thrillers. From the poor critical and box-office reaction to his 2007 version of Le Deuxieme Souffle, or The Second Wind as it’s called on UK DVD, he might have regretted going back to his old stamping ground, especially after the unflattering comparisons with Jean-Pierre Melville’s 1966 version of Jose Giovanni’s novel, but it’s a surprisingly effective thriller on its own terms. While it’s relatively unusual to see him handling a story with a distinct beginning, middle and end these days, he responds surprisingly well to the pulp material and even improves on some aspects of Melville’s version. Whereas Melville’s film, not one of his best by any stretch of the imagination, was a few set pieces the director was interested in and a lot of exposition he wasn’t, Corneau’s version (co-written by Giovanni) feels like a more complete narrative that has its director’s complete attention throughout and one that doesn’t outstay its welcome at two-and-a-half hours.

The film’s biggest hurdle is its usually reliable leading man. A miscast Daniel Auteuil convincingly conveys the out of shape and past it aspect of his escaped con looking for a big score to fund his getaway only to find himself set up as an informer and desperate to clear his name but, despite looking surprisingly like a shrunken Lino Ventura in a couple of sequences, lacks the iconic presence the part really needs and never really comes into his own until the last third. We learn more about the character from the way other characters describe him than we ever get out of his performance, resulting in a nominal leading man who never really lives up to his constant buildup (“In this rotten world, he has the guts to accept what he does - the supreme elegance of a lost man. Gu signs his crimes,” “He has the luxury of having nothing to lose while we just dabble in felony”). While the discrepancy between what he was, what he is now, how others see him and how he sees himself is intentional, Auteuil still comes up short because you simply can’t imagine him ever being the stuff of underworld legend.

Far more convincing is Eric Cantona, a credibly thuggish presence as a loyal partner in crime – he doesn’t need to be a great actor because his look and his bearing does all the work for him. But then this is a film where the supporting characters are often more interesting than the anti-hero. Despite a disappointing opening scene that pales beside Paul Meurisse’s showstopping entrance in Melville’s film, Michel Blanc soon makes the part of the world-weary flic on Auteuil’s trail his own, while Jacques Dutronc brings more depth to the stylish but noncommittal intermediary Orloff than is probably on the page. Daniel Duval’s wonderfully named thief Venture Ricci and Philippe Nahon’s brutal cop have less to work with but still manage to make an impression, though the best that can be said for Monica Bellucci’s moll is that while she may not be particularly good she’s not particularly bad enough to be a problem.

It doesn’t reach the epic heights you sense it might be aspiring to but the professional violence and the setpieces are well handled, with the big heist (now taking place in a warehouse district rather than a country road) particularly effective. We also get to see the infamous water torture sequence that caused so many censorship problems in the previous adaptation this time, though the hiding the guns sequence that made such an impression on John Woo is missing this time round. It’s more stylised than Melville’s film, with dreamlike slow motion in some scenes and an unreal color scheme of simultaneously saturated but slightly sickly reds, greens and amber throughout looking more like a Jeunot and Caro film or the kind of unreal color of a 60s comic book than the classic noir or neo-noir look. The film only changes to natural color in the film’s closing shot as the public – a few indistinct innocent bystanders notwithstanding, otherwise unseen for the entire movie – return to reclaim the scene of the crime, oblivious to the violence that took place there as they go about their everyday lives as if in a parallel world. And while, at the end of the day the film may not have much more to say than that criminals live in a different and more exaggerated world to the rest of us, if you take it as simply a decent thriller that’s probably enough.

[LegacyCosts]

Originally Posted by The Great Owl

I shared my review of Terrence Malick's A Hidden Life in the Movies sub-forum. it's my favorite film of 2019.

If you have a chance to see this one on a big theater screen, then you absolutely must.

This film is Criterion-worthy, but I also believe that it would be a shame not to have it see the light of day on a 4K UHD disc.

Looks like a return to form for Malick, I haven't been enamored with his recent movies but thanks for the recommendation.

[SeanJoyce]

Always a good time while hunkering down with some Aclea reviews

this 1949 adaptation of Vercors’ hugely popular WW2 novella can lay claim to having influenced both Robert Bresson and the Nouvelle Vague filmmakers both in terms of its style and its production.

Melville bristled at the Bresson comparisons, famously exclaiming "I was Melvillian before there was Bressonian!"

What are your thoughts on the middle film of the trifecta, Leon Morin, Priest?

And do you know what went on between Ventura and Melville that caused them to not be on speaking terms while making Army of Shadows? When did it occur? Curiously Melville originally wanted Ventura to play Mattei in Le Cercle Rouge (along with Belmondo as Vogel and Meurisse as Jansen.)

[GeoffOliver]

If Criterion still has some Fox films up their sleeve, I hope they also announce An Affair to Remember, if only because they would also likely include the original Love Affair from 1939 (which doesn't even have an official DVD).

[Rafows]

Criterion still has to upgrade Fox’s Unfaithfully yours (1948, Preston Sturges) that has undergone a 4k restoration. Hopefully it will be released in 2020.

I already have the Uk Bluray releases of Thieves’ Highway and Pickup on South Street, which are both excellent transfers. Therefore, I am not waiting for Criterion to release them.

[Aclea]

Originally Posted by SeanJoyce

What are your thoughts on the middle film of the trifecta, Leon Morin, Priest?

I've only seen the shorter cut that the BFI and Criterion released, but it was one of those clearly good films that just didn't draw me in. I've got the more recent longer restoration from StudioCanal to watch (though it looks like Melville's three hour first cut which dealt more directly with the German occupation is lost), probably in the New Year - post-Christmas/January always feels the perfect time for Melville, whose films often have a cold, crisp Wintery feel (a bit like Narnia's always Winter but never Christmas) - and might appreciate it more on a second viewing. Bob le Flambeur was a big disappointment after hearing how great it was for years, but improved on a second viewing with revised expectations.

And do you know what went on between Ventura and Melville that caused them to not be on speaking terms while making Army of Shadows? When did it occur? Curiously Melville originally wanted Ventura to play Mattei in Le Cercle Rouge (along with Belmondo as Vogel and Meurisse as Jansen.)

Belmondo was just wishful thinking: Melville regularly fell out with his stars - Volante walked off Cercle and had to be coaxed back by Delon - and Belmondo never forgave Melville for bullying Charles Vanel on Magnet of Doom. It was the train scene in Deuxieme for Ventura: Melville instructed the driver to speed up and taunted Ventura about being out of shape because he wanted to see him really suffering while chasing it. Most people were amazed he did L'Armee after that, but I suspect that was more a testament to the part and the novel's stature than Melville's famously lacking tact and diplomacy.

[The Great Owl]

I received Tunes of Glory and Until the End of the World as Christmas gifts tonight when I spent the evening with family.

Woo hoo!