Shadow Troop poster
Before the leader of the Shadow Force Resistance, Philippe, was shot, he flashed back to the beautiful young woman he had seen in the tavern of yesteryear. This scene is reminiscent of a passage from Bernstein in Citizen Kane, "A man tends to remember a lot of things that you don't think he will remember." ...... She wore a white dress and a white parasol. I saw her for only a second, and she didn't see me at all, but I dare say I've thought of her a few times a month since."
Philip more often showed the bravery and sophistication of a revolutionary, rarely revealing his heart. He had close comrades-in-arms, but he was also lonely.
Stills from Shadow Troops
Melville incorporated abstract fatalistic tragedies into the war films, presenting the desperate and lonely lives of the French Resistance, who either committed suicide by poisoning, were executed by their comrades, or were killed by the Gestapo. Resistance is their necessary move and choice, even if it leads to death.
Heroic and courageous, Mathilde cleverly rescued her leader Philip. After her arrest, the Gestapo threatened her daughter, and revolutionaries had to shoot her in the streets, like Molina's death in Spider-Woman's Kiss. The bleak ending is cold to the bone marrow, echoing the tone of the film's ice blue, cold gray and dark green.
Like the characters in the film, Melville has a maverick style, often single-handedly arranging directors, photography, sets, editing, etc., which was promoted and imitated by later New Wave directors. As a tribute, Godard asked Melville to appear in Exhausted, leaving behind the classic "Become Immortal, then Die".
Stills from Exhausted
Melville began to make a large number of Hollywood-style crime films in the 1950s, such as "Big Hit" ("Bob the Gambler"), "Eyeliner", "Second Breath", "Lone Killer", "Red Circle" and other films, but at the same time modified.
Second Breath (left) and The Red Circle (right)
During the filming of Bob the Gambler, Melville found that the story was similar to John Houston's "The Night Is Not Quiet", both showing that the criminals after prison planned a larger robbery plan, for money, but also for women, and the result was invariably going to death, losing money, and unable to live with the woman they liked.
Bob the Gambler
Melville adjusted the trajectory of the story to make it head toward a comedic ending, and The Gambling Bob won a staggering number. Years from now, the third story in Lola, Run May have been influenced by this.
Stills from "Lola Run"
"Eyeliner" modified the snake and scorpion beauty setting in the film noir, and men do not have to die in your hands to die, but because of misunderstandings. Belmondo's character is shadowed when he appears, and the audience cannot see his face, which echoes the inability to judge from the story whether he is a police informant or not. The film deliberately omits some crucial scenes, which misleads the audience and other robbers into misjudging his motives, leading to his death.
Stills from "Eyeliner"
If the fate of the characters in "Bob the Gambler" and "Eyeliner" is rewritten by accident and misunderstanding, then Melville then makes this fatalistic tragedy more abstract. Jeff kills for money, but also for morality and honor. His self-arranged death ending fulfills the killer's first priority, but he can't get rid of his relationship with women. Perhaps the moment of looking at each other through the car window in the rain became Jeff's indelible memory, even though he did not show it on the outside.
Matching the fatalistic story, the killer or robber in Melville's films is always cold on the outside and silent, and the audience has no way to peek inside. The gambler Bob was always alone, and he liked a girl, but only when his friend's son, Paul, stopped liking her.
"Eyeliner" begins with a long shot of a man walking wordlessly on a road next to a railway. Misunderstandings make it impossible for Belmondo's character to fly away from the woman he loves, he leaves a sentence for the woman, then sorts out the hat, and dies alone and gracefully. Trench coats and hats became standard for killers or robbers.
If it weren't for cigarettes, we would have thought it was an empty room, and "Lone Killer" made the color film look like a black-and-white film. The film simplifies color, takes time of dialogue, the cold-hearted killer gets out of bed, the newspaper slides over the birdcage, dresses, tidys up the brim of the hat, and repeats the action even when exchanging hats with people at the police station.
Jeff, the angel of destruction on the dark streets, arranges his life, with neatly arranged wine bottles and cigarettes in the cupboards, "I don't talk to people with guns." He also arranged his own death.
Stills from "The Lone Killer"
Stealing and going to death is the fate of the three thieves in "The Red Circle", and their process of stealing jewelry without a word and methodically cooperating has become a classic passage in the history of cinema, which is influenced by Jules Dassing's "The Battle of Men".
There was also a fright in the order, and the thief who could have shot on a tripod suddenly raised his gun because he wanted to prove his ability. He was looking for a kind of dignified loneliness. It's not just the thieves who are lonely, the film twice shows the family life of their nemesis, the cop, alone, with only cats and dogs.
Stills from "The Red Circle"
Drawing on Hollywood films, but with innovative vibrancy, Melville established a link between Hollywood films and French New Wave films.
As Podwell and Kristen Thompson put it in their History of World Cinema, "If we say that Renoir was the father of the New Wave, then Melville is arguably the grandfather of the New Wave.".
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