Jean-Pierre Melville Collection - 6-DVD Box Set ( Bob Le Flambeur / Léon Morin, prêtre / Le doulos / L'armée des ombres / Le cercle rouge / Un flic ) ( The Honest Thief / The Forgi [ NON-USA FORMAT, PAL, Reg.2 Import - United Kingdom ]

Jean-Pierre Melville Collection - 6-DVD Box Set ( Bob Le Flambeur / L �on Morin, pr� tre / Le doulos / L'arm e des ombres / Le cercle rouge / Un flic ) ( The Honest Thief / The Forgi [ NON-USA FORMAT, PAL, Reg.2 Import - United Kingdom ]

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United Kingdom released, PAL/Region 2 DVD: it WILL NOT play on standard US DVD player. You need multi-region PAL/NTSC DVD player to view it in USA/Canada: LANGUAGES: French ( Dolby Digital 2.0 ), English ( Subtitles ), SPECIAL FEATURES: Black & White, Box Set, Interactive Menu, Multi-DVD Set, Scene Access, SYNOPSIS: Jean-Pierre Melville (1917 - 1974) is one of the most revered French film directors of all time. Born in Paris, he was to become a member of the French Resistance in the Second World War, an experience which he drew on as a film director, creating underworlds 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 the American film noirs of 1930s and '40s Hollywood, the traditions of which he wove with inimitable style into his quintessentially French films, seeing him hailed by many as the father of the French gangster movie.

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 contemporary cinema's most exceptional careers.

Army of Shadows (1969): Regarded as one of the best films ever made about wartime France. Members of the French resistance fight for freedom in the face of constant danger.

Le Doulos / Doulos: The Finger Man (1962): An unforgettable story of trust, betrayal and honour. A criminal, just free from jail, goes in search of revenge.

Leon Morin Pretre/ The Forgiven Sinner (1961): Unforgettable drama set in occupied France. A beautiful but disil...Jean-Pierre Melville Collection - 6-DVD Box Set ( Bob Le Flambeur / L� on Morin, pr� tre / Le doulos / L'arm e des ombres / Le cercle rouge / Un flic ) ( The Honest Thief / The Forgi

Jean-Pierre Melville Collection - 6-DVD Box Set ( Bob Le Flambeur / L� on Morin, pr �tre / Le doulos / L'armée des ombres / Le cercle rouge / Un flic ) ( The Honest Thief / The Forgi [ NON-USA FORMAT, PAL, Reg.2 Import - United Kingdom ] Review

There is a sordid aspect to favorable reviews- especially movie reviews. The price of the films reviewed goes up. Therefore, I will try to include some negative things in this review to keep the price of the package down for future consumers.

You will need a DVD player that can be set to Region 0 in order to watch this package of films. This is easily done with almost any Phillips DVD player, and many others. The film package arrives with a red circle on the box, inside of which is printed the number "12". This signifies the film content may only be sold to those 12 years and older. For this package, a bump to "16" might be more appropriate, and we'll discuss the reason for that later on. I noticed the same red circle and the number "12" on another film set, "The Neo-Realist" collection, featuring the memorable Vittorio de Sica classic "The Bicycle Thief". For that package, I would agree with the "12" designation. Be that as it may, simply set your DVD player to Region 0 and you are on your way.

For most of the films in this Jean Pierre Melville collection, you have as your guide the peerless Ginette Vincendeau. Her expertise on French film is encyclopedic, and her presentations are delivered in flawless English. She points out how Melville adored American crime cinema; indeed, you see stills of the director in sunglasses and Stetson, so that he comes off as an Arizona State Trooper wannabe. His name, as Roger Ebert points out, is derived from the great 19th century American novelist. But even though these films are chock full of Americana, they retain an essential French quality. In almost every film, for example, there are scenes of sumptuous women in various stages of undress, none of which would make it past the Breen era Production Code regulations. Bob Le Flambeur features a black and white tile design on caf house walls while in the milieu of city streets; Melville gives viewers more than a distinct taste of Paris. Finally, it's remarkable how heavily French police in these films rely on informants to deliver incriminating information, sometimes against innocent people.

All the films in this collection have been immaculately restored so that viewing them is essentially a brand new experience.

Bob Le Flambeur (Bob, The Gambler)
Bob is pushing 60 years of age, having been released in 1955 - the film's beginning is quietly provocative, especially the shot of the trolley car descending into the city streets. A special joy of Bob is the dialog: it's concise, so reading the English subtitles is not a burdensome task, and you can concentrate on more important things like figuring out what kind of car Bob is driving. It's not an Edsel, those didn't appear until 1958. Whatever, it's a sleek set of wheels rivaling Count Vincenzo's convertible in The Barefoot Contessa..

Despite its urban setting, many of the film's values are rural. John Wayne wouldn't tolerate a pimp brutalizing women, neither does Bob. When the tight Paris streets are invaded by spacious American cars, we have another delicious juxtaposition and culture clash. Bob has to find some motivation to life besides gambling, and although he's put his criminal past behind him, he thinks a nice heist would allow him to ease into retirement. Club owner Yvonne (Simone Paris) truly loves him and tries to dissuade his inclinations but he won't listen, setting in motion a final caper.

Bob Le Flambeur is probably Melville's most upbeat film, with an ending (which I will not reveal) that is existential and absurdist, exactly the kind of quirkiness that guarantees this film will remain on "best ever" lists into the indeterminate future

Le Doulos (The Informer)
Le Doulos has a much darker tone than Bob Le Flambeur. Jean Paul Belmondo has the title role and although his outward demeanor is placid, he is quite ruthless, so much so that his actions seem gratuitous and I almost get the feeling he is sleepwalking through the role. This was also true in the only other Belmondo film I saw, Jean Luc Goddard's 1961 classic, Breathless. Nor does his uncanny resemblance to Ringo Starr do him any favors. For me, Belmondo and everyone else in the film tries too hard to be laconic without understanding this doesn't have to mean lifeless.

Le Cercle Rouge (The Red Circle) is a heist film featuring the redoubtable Yves Montand battling personal demons in the aftermath of a ruined career as a police detective. He joins up with a gang on the opposite side of the law and adds a measure of intelligence and urbane charm in a role as a sharp shooting jewel thief.. In all of Melville's heist films, the police lean heavily on ordinary citizens, pressuring them to act as informers, and one has the feeling this trait in Melville's filmmaking had its source in his World War II experience when Nazi occupiers of France used similar tactics to pressure French citizens into cooperating with their German occupiers. It's menacing enough in wartime, altogether shocking when you see the way Melville deploys it in peacetime. This is a color film, in contrast to Melville's earlier black and white efforts. Alain Delon, one of France's biggest film stars, is engulfed in the plot early on, and carries out his functions with aplomb and maximum cool under duress.

L�on Morin, pretre (Leon Morin, priest)
Jean Paul Belmondo again has the title role in a film rooted in Melville's World War II experience. Leon Morin is a priest who forms a friendship with a village girl, Barny, (Emmanuele Riva), initially confident in her atheism, although under Morin's influence, gradually easing over to Catholicism along with a distinct yearning for physical as well as spiritual fulfillment. Morin's steadfast celibacy insures the dilemmas between faith and fulfillment are explored at the highest levels of language and symbol. Belmondo seems more engaged in this film, unleashing a broader range of emotion than in films where he plays a gangster. The film drifts from war into peace, Barny and Morin carrying their angst into the postwar era unresolved, in like manner soldiers come and go, first German then American, and we feel a unique moment of terror coming not from Morin, the priest, but during an encounter between Emmanuele, her daughter, and American soldiers who walk them home. French New Wave cinema was in full flower at the time the film was made and Belmondo was its biggest star. He thought long and hard before taking on this role, perhaps sensing a victory of sorts, as his character emerges uncorrupted while Barny is too emeshed in despair to do anything else but sob.

Army of Shadows
Movie goers stayed away in droves when this picture opened in Paris theaters in 1969, a 25 year interim between World War II and the present apparantly not enough to provide the kind of cultural embrace the film deserves. Then again, who wants to be reminded that your country gave support, sustenance and active collaboration to Nazi invaders? And that really is the kind of confrontation with collective conscience Jean Pierre Melville provokes in this film - from the boldly grandiose, and to my mind, Felliniesque contretemps by German troops on the Champ Elysses at the film's opening, to the ever present gendarmes engaging in one act of open support after another with their Nazi occupiers, Like it or not, Melville pounds a single concept home to viewers: the Nazi occupation of France could not have been as successful as it was without wholesale acquiescence by France itself. That's a difficult alarum to hear from anybody, let alone a home grown patriot.

To make the beginning of this film, Roger Ebert writes that Melville had to win an exemption from a law forbidding pictures of German uniforms on the Champs Elysees. It is also said this is not a film about action. It certainly contains action - at one point the leader of a Resistance cell, played in the film by Lino Ventura (who bears a remarkable resemblance to Leon Panetta), jabs a knife into the throat of a machine gun wielding Nazi guard. But in that sequence, and others, the predominate emotion Melville makes you feel is terror - simple sweat on the palm terror. There is no happy ending in this film. For those who participated in the story, Melville includes summaries of their fates near the closing credits. It is clear they were engaged in thankless work; the reward for their effort, if it came at all, arrived posthumously.

Un Flic (A Cop)
My ex-wife thought the world of Catherine Deneuve. The mere mention of her name elicited paroxysms of ecasty in our household. I'd seen a film or two of hers, to be sure, but nothing that sent me over the top. Un Flic is the film my ex must have had in mind staring Catherine Deneuve. I don't know where she could have seen it - an art festival somewhere perhaps. Suffice it to say, such is Catherine Deneuve's on screen radiance that even a murderously corrupt police superintendent played wilely by Alain Delon is emasculated in her arms. As if to flaunt her cunning, she gets the drop on him temporarily, then holsters the heat just to let him know she could have, if she'd wanted to. They're both soulless and corrupt in Melville's final film, released in 1972, a year before his death in 1973. Deneuve herself was five years removed from her performance in the Luis Bu�el masterpiece, Belle de Jour. Perhaps that's the film my ex saw and learned what she learned. Imagine that!

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