The first of Jean-Pierre Melville's many emulations of the American film noir, and much scragglier in appearance than the later Le Doulos, Second Breath, and The Samurai. The semi-documentary and lyrical evocations of Montmartre at night seem rather at odds, here, with the classical gangster-film iconography. But the idealization of Bob the Hero, with his endless chain of cigarettes, his trench coat, his silver hair, his steely glance, his Old World gallantry, gives a very full taste of things to come. Made in 1955, and not made available in America until 1982, it remains very much a movie of its time: i.e., an important prefigurement of Godard's Breathless. With Roger Duchesne and Isabel Corey; narrated by Melville. (1956) — Duncan Shepherd
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