Throughout July, the NFSA Cinémathèque at Electric Shadows Cinemas in Canberra will screen a new season of works: A Band of Outsiders: the Cinematic Underworld of Jean-Pierre Melville. Iconic French director Melville made 13 films across his 25-year career. Most famous is his series of richly mannered Serie noir and Policier French genre films, influenced by his own fascination with Hollywood and American popular culture. But Melville's work also included a number of powerful and moving non-genre films, based on his own involvement in the French Resistance.
Melville's features and their intense realisation of the 'ethics' of underworld sub-cultures are among the most influential in modern cinema - they are a strong presence in the work of Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, Johnnie To, John Woo and many other masters of the cinema crime thriller. NFSA Cinémathèque will screen L'Armée des ombres (Army of the Shadows), Melville's dream-like, semi-autobiographical film transposing his gangster-noir to a Resistance setting; Les Enfants terribles, a claustrophobic drama about the relationship between two siblings, based on Jean Cocteau's famous novel; Le Doulos where Melville directs Jean-Paul Belmondo in a noir tale of self-defined morality in the criminal underworld; and Le Samouraï, Melville's tour-de-force and one of the most influential works of crime cinema, starring Alain Delon.
The season is presented in association with the Sydney Film Festival and the Melbourne Cinémathèque. For screenings information visit the NFSA Cinémathèque website.
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