Melville: The Essential Collection (6 Films, Region B)

Jean-Pierre Melville (1917 - 1974) is one of the most revered French film directors of all time. Born in Paris during WW1, he was to become a member of the French resistance in the Second World War, an experience which he drew on in his later career as a film director, routinely plunging his characters into an underworld of secrecy and deception. The reluctant godfather of the French New Wave, Melville's highly individual style was influenced by the ideas of existentialism and surrealism, but arguably his greatest debt was to classical American cinema, the traditions of which he wove with inimitable style into his quintessentially French films. Hailed by many as the father of the French gangster movie, he was inspired by the classic film noirs of 1930s and 40s Hollywood, imbuing many his films with a sense of menace and impending peril, creating a sinister underworld to be traversed by his ubiquitous gun-toting hoodlums.

 

This set contains six of his finest films, from his early bittersweet masterpiece, Bob Le Flambeur, to his final film, Un flic, his wonderfully fatalistic study of loss and deception; a fitting epitaph to one of the finest careers in contemporary cinema.

 

EXTRAS:

LE DOULOS

NEW Interview with first assistant director Volker Schlondorff - 20 minutes

 

BOB LE FLAMBEUR

NEW retrospective documentary by the film critic Dominique Maillet - 20 minutes

 

LEON MORIN PRETRE

NEW Master class with Philippe Labro (friend and apprentice of Melville) + Rémy Grumbach (Melville's nephew) - 59 minutes

 

LE CERCLE ROUGE

DVD Extras

Interview with Le Cercle Rouge's first assistant director Bernard Stora - 30 minutes

 

BD Extras

Code Name Melville - 76 minutes

 

Interview with first assistant

 

director Bernard Stora - 30 minutes

 

Interview with novelist José Giovanni - 15 minutes

 

Présentation by Ginette Vincendeau 21'30

 

Army of Shadows

L'armée des ombres... le dessous des cartes" (Army of Shadows: the hidden side of the story) documentary - 87 minutes

 

Un Flic

Documentary featuring interviews with Un Flic's script supervisor Florence Moncorgé-Gabin and first assistant director Jean-François Delon -24 minutes

 

BONUS DVD:

In the mood for Melville documentary - 52 minutes

 

24 Heures de la vie d'un clown - Melville short - 22 minutes