On directing > My films never follow the current trend | Jean-Pierre Melville, 1917-1973

Jean-Pierre Melville in Breathless (Jean-Luc Godard, 1960)

“My love for cinema began with the talkies, around 1929 or ’30. The first time I heard a word coming from a screen was White Shadows in the South Seas by Van Dyke and Flaherty, when Monte Blue suddenly said, “Civilization, civilization.” It was the first time I’d heard talking cinema. At that moment I fell madly in love.”

Jean-Pierre Melville, The Silence of the Sea (Le Silence de la Mer), 1949 *

“It was difficult, but I managed. When I had money, I’d buy film and we’d shoot. I think your first film should be made with your own blood.” *

“I believe you must be madly in love with cinema to create films. You also need a huge cinematic baggage.”

Jean-Pierre Melville, Les Enfants terribles, 1950

“Filming is absolutely horrible. I call it ‘tedious formality’. I hate shooting. My only relief in the whole tiresome business are the wonderful moments when I’m directing actors.”

“I like to take risks. My films never follow the current trend.”

“I move from realism to fantasy without the spectator ever noticing.”

Jean-Pierre Melville, When You Read This Letter, 1953

“All my films hinge on the fantastic. I’m not a documentarian; a film is first and foremost a dream, and it’s absurd to copy life in an attempt to produce an exact recreation of it. Transposition is more or less a reflex with me.”

Jean-Pierre Melville, Two Men in Manhattan, 1959

“It so happens that the gangster story is a very suitable vehicle for the particular form of modern tragedy called film noir, which was born from American detective novels. It’s a flexible genre. You can put whatever you want into it, good or bad. And it’s a fairly easy vehicle to use to tell stories that matter to you about individual freedom, friendship, or rather human relationships, because they’re not always friendly. Or betrayal, one of the driving forces in American crime novels.”

Jean-Pierre Melville, Léon Morin, Priest 1961

“At birth man is offered only one choice –the choice of his death. But if this choice is governed by distaste for his own existence, his life will never have been more than meaningless.”

“I’d usually see five films a day. Fewer than five and I’d get withdrawal symptoms. I’ve always had a screening room at home so I could watch a couple of American films after dinner.”

Jean-Pierre Melville, Le Doulos, 1962

“I don’t know what will be left of me fifty years from now. I suspect that all films will have aged terribly and that the cinema probably won’t even exist anymore. My guess is that the final disappearance of cinemas will take place around the year 2020, so in fifty years’ time, there will be nothing but television.”

Jean-Pierre Melville, Le Samouraï, 1967

“It’s the honest point of view of an artist: You have to please.I’d like viewers to come away from my films unsure whether they’ve understood them. I want to leave them wondering.”

Jean-Pierre Melville, 1917-1973

Jean-Pierre Melville, Army of Shadows, 1969

* [On producing his first full length film, Le Silence de la Mer, 1949 himself ]

“This film has no pretension of solving the problem of Franco-German relations, for they cannot be solved while the barbarous Nazi crimes, committed with the complicity of the German people, remain fresh in men’s minds.”

Jean-Pierre Melville, Le Cercle rouge, 1970

Also:
Flick Review < Le deuxième souffle | Jean-Pierre Melville, 1966
Prot-a-gonist: Alain Delon / Jean-Pierre Melville, 1967
Flick Review < Les Doulos | Jean-Pierre Melville, 1962
The book and the movie: Les Enfants Terribles / The Holy Terrors | Jean Cocteau, 1929 / Jean-Pierre Melville, 1950