Jean-Pierre Melville

Jean-Pierre Melville — Biography

Jean-Pierre Melville, born Jean-Pierre Grumbach in the 9th arrondissement of Paris on 20 October 1917, came from an Alsatian Jewish family; he joined the French Resistance during the Second World War and took the name Melville out of admiration for the American writer Herman Melville. His brother Jacques, crossing the Pyrenees to reach the Free French, was killed and robbed by their own guide, and Jean-Pierre did not learn of the death until the war had ended.

Refused a license to work as an assistant director, Melville set out to make films independently and is regarded as a spiritual forerunner of the French New Wave and among its earliest fully independent filmmakers. He is remembered for the crime pictures Le Samouraï, Le Doulos, Le Cercle Rouge and Bob le flambeur, as well as two Resistance-era war films, Le Silence de la mer and Army of Shadows; his work shaped directors including Quentin Tarantino and Martin Scorsese, and he was made a Knight of the Legion of Honour.

Married to Florence from 1952 until his death, Melville died in Paris on 2 August 1973 while dining with the writer Philippe Labro, of a reported heart attack or aneurysm; he had been writing a spy film for Yves Montand at the time.