Jean-Pierre Melville, the supreme stylist of French film noir, is getting the retrospective he (and his fans) truly deserve. Starting on April 17, the Alliance Francaise Bangkok will screen five Melville films, plus one documentary about the filmmaker and another that makes strong allusion to his style.
Later in the month, starting April 27, the Thai Film Archive will host an expanded programme, repeating the titles screened at Alliance Francaise while adding films from two contemporary directors (Quentin Tarantino and the Coen brothers), whose crime stories are heavily influenced by the French master.
The cool assassins, stylish ex-cons and breathless fatalism of the Melville universe are some of the most recognisable elements in his rich oeuvre that continue to inspire generations of filmmakers. Melville's heroes and villains are sometimes indistinguishable, and the act of criminality is hinged upon post-war existentialist philosophy. His films are set in moody shadows populated by men in trench coats, guns ready at inside pockets, inhabiting a world where betrayals and narrow alleys are the order of the day. Watching Melville movies means also watching Jean-Paul Belmondo and Alain Delon, two embodiments of the suave killer, cigarettes stuck perpetually between lips, or of pre-punk, pre-hipster delinquents driven headlong into immoral adventures. They're two iconic faces of the French New Wave at a moment in cinema history when romantic gangsters are ambushed by emptiness and despair.
Besides Tarantino and the Coens -- who update Melville's debonair gangsterism with rougher American edges -- filmmakers such as John Woo, Michael Mann and Thailand's own Pen-ek Ratanaruang have professed their reverence for the French master. This retrospective also includes I Hired A Contract Killer by Finnish director Aki Kaurismaki, often known for his deadpan social comedy but who took a detour to make this sweet and oddball film about a man who hires a killer to kill himself only to fall inexorably in love with her.
Besides the films noir he's famous for, Melville made three films about World War II and the French Resistance (The Silence Of The Sea; Leon Morin, Priest; and The Army Of Shadows), all of them present in the programme.
Visit http://afthailande.org/en/melville-retrospective/.
