In the body of film history, the career of Jean-Pierre Melville represents a crucial piece of connective tissue. Melville may not have been the first French filmmaker to take inspiration from American crime films, but he did so more openly and with greater relish than any other before him. His 1950s crime tales, Bob le Flambeur (1956) and Two Men in Manhattan (1959) are madly cinephilic works that wear their influences on their sleeves. The characters are all but defined by their American cars and clothes, while the style of these movies is so ripe and self-aware that one never forgets that they’re in the world of the Movies. With its low budget and movie-mad attitude, Bob le Flambeur was a key reference point for the directors of the French New Wave, who looked to Melville as a godfather. Melville turned in cameos in a couple of major New Wave films, Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless and Eric Rohmer’s The Sign of Leo, and he reportedly provided Godard with advice when the younger director was editing his first feature; moreover, Francois Truffaut, Louis Malle, and Claude Chabrol turned to Melville’s regular cinematographer, Henri Decaë, to shoot their early works.) His later, more austere crime works, among them Le Samouraï (1967) and Le Cercle Rouge (1970), were key influences on such Hong Kong directors as John Woo and Johnnie To, who were inspired by these works when developing their own style in the 1980s and ’90s.
This personal connection to the material would explain why Army of Shadows is widely considered the greatest film about the Resistance, though I’d argue that the movie also informs the less overtly personal Léon Morin. My personal favorite of Melville’s works, the spiritual drama Léon Morin concerns the wartime relationship between an atheist widow (Emmanuelle Riva) and a passionate young priest (Belmondo). The widow first comes to him out of curiosity about religion, then develops a true calling after months of serious debate. Her fascination with religion is clearly rooted in her unspoken physical attraction to the priest, and Melville develops a seductive tension in her conflicted motives. The director’s attention to small, revealing behavior—which he typically used to generate suspense—creates a potent eroticism here. While the two characters never touch, one always senses a strong attraction between them. Yet Léon Morin is about more than unspoken desire—its ultimate concern is the unseen force of religious faith, in which the characters find solace during the Nazi occupation. Conceivably the most probing film about Catholicism ever made by a Jewish director, Léon Morin deepens the theme of tacit devotion that runs through all of Melville’s filmography.
