EPiSODE 318: Jean-Pierre Melville, From the French Resistance to the Master of French Noir.

"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."

The Pink Smoke’s John Cribbs, Christopher Funderburg and Eric Pfriender recently appeared on the Wrong Reel podcast along with host James Hancock to discuss France's master of crime cinema, Jean-Pierre Melville.

Join the group as they cover Melville's beginnings as a fighter in the French Resistance in WWII, his failed attempts to break into filmmaking and subsequent creation of an independent film studio, as well as the evolution of his work from High Art Cinema into the elegantly gritty gangster films for which he is beloved. Fedoras and heists, tough talk and double-crosses - you know the drill. But nobody ever transformed de rigueur into sui generis like Melville.

~ SEPTEMBER 12, 2017 ~