Jean-Pierre Melville's sleek French noir set the template for everyone ... “Le Doulos” could be seen as a rough draft for this movie). “There is no greater solitude than that of the samurai ...

A movie director, he said ... and François Truffaut’s “The 400 Blows” (1959), a crest of the French Nouvelle Vague. Melville is sometimes acclaimed as a godfather of that movement, but ...

(Crenna apparently studied French and spoke his lines in that language but was dubbed in post-production.) For another, it features Catherine Deneuve, a more glamorous actress than Melville ...

Alain Delon, the French actor most famous for his roles ... in “Le Samourai” could just seem cold in a lesser movie, such as Melville’s “Un Flic.” Nevertheless it is hard for Americans ...

One of the leaders of the French New Wave, Melville adopted the aesthetic of classic Hollywood noir and gangster movies and infused them with a European modernity. His best films were stylish ...