Mixing interviews, rare archival footage and film extracts, the film shows how Melville's works were impacted by what he experienced in his youth during WWII, and how it structured his whole approach to cinema, not only in its thematic but also in its aesthetics.
Direction
Bohler lets the work breathe without hagiography.
Production
Rare footage of Melville's actual Resistance activities.
Director
Olivier Bohler
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Melville destroyed his own early films and buried traces of his Jewish identity; this doc exhumes both.
The 'Melville look' — trench coats, fedoras, empty rooms — was partly budget necessity, partly psychological armor.
FR
