Jean-Pierre Melville

JeanPierre Grumbach 20 October 1917 2 August 1973 known professionally as JeanPierre Melville French mɛlvil was a French filmmaker Considered a spiritual father of the French New Wave he was one of the first fullyindependent French filmmakers to achieve commercial and critical success His works include the crime dramas Bob le flambeur 1956 Le Doulos 1962 Le Samouraï 1967 and Le Cercle Rouge 1970 and the war films Le Silence de la mer 1949 and Army of Shadows 1969 Melvilles subject matter and approach to filmmaking was heavily influenced by his service in the French Resistance during World War II during which he adopted the pseudonym Melville as a tribute to his favorite American author Herman Melville He kept it as his stage name once the war was over His sparse existentialist but stylish approach to film noir and later neonoir films many of them in the crime dramas have been highly influential to future generations of filmmakers Roger Ebert appraised him as one of the greatest directors Description above from the Wikipedia article JeanPierre Melville licensed under CCBYSA full list of contributors on Wikipedia