This first major study of Jean-Pierre Melville in the English language discusses the artistic value of the films in their context as well as the director's love of American culture from which he derived his name, his sartorial style of Stetson hat and dark glasses and his ambition to rework the hollywood gangster film in a French setting.
Vincendeau looks at Melville's controversial critical and political standing, his extraordinary focus on masculinity and male stars such as Alain Delon, Jean-Paul Belmondo and Lino Ventura, and his trademark 'pared-down' mise-en-scene.
One of the world's leading writers on French cinema, Ginette Vincendeau has here provided a comprehensive critical account of Melville that reveals him to be not only a fashionable cult director but one of the few true masters of cinema.
