Smartorhypo Highly Overrated But Still Good

Majorthebys Charming and brutal

Catangro After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

Myron Clemons A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

boblipton As a native New Yorker, I found the movie a bit creepy, Melville's image of Manhattan is too perfect, a city where the streets are seamless, glistening ribbons of asphalt, where the ashtrays have smoked cigarette butts stacked neatly in them with no sign of ash, where even the glass in telephone booths on the streets are spotless. When a French diplomat disappears and reporter Jean-Paul Melville in his first credited screen role -- clearly he must have impressed the director -- is set on his trail, he doesn't realize he himself is being followed. Meanwhile I was looking for a scrap of litter on the street, a straphanger on the subway whose hat and soul have been battered by a tough day.... nothing. Everyone is perfectly dressed, everything is perfectly clean, everyone dresses like a serious adult. You should have seen the motley assortment on the E train this afternoon.Finally, about a quarter hour in, Melville goes to the apartment of his cameraman, Pierre Grasset, and the wallpaper outside his apartment was poorly hung. Aha! I thought, a creature of the demi-monde, someone who cuts corners, was looking out for himself, who had pictures of the young women that the diplomat.... associated with. Off they went into the night, still followed by a mysterious trailer, Melville, the moral reporter, and Grasset, the corrupt guide. I knew they would find their prey; but how moral would Melville be and how corrupt Grasset? And who was following them and why? Who was the hero of this story and exactly what was the Great White Whale they were following?This movie is Melville's own personal fantasy, set in a fantasy New York glamorous beyond belief to anyone who has dwelt in the real one. He had been born Jen-Pierre Grumbach, and had adopted a new surname in admiration of Herman Melville. He had played Bartleby and written and directed his own movies and now was going on his own voyage to find out if he could be the hero of his own tale.

antcol8 This film is actually quite bad. But that really isn't so important. It's also fascinating, and that's much more important. The whole concept of Misreading, as it has been developed by Harold Bloom, is really important to me, and this film is like a certain kind of textbook. If you have a big American car in a French film, that means one thing. If you have a couple of French guys driving a big American car in New York, the meaning is totally different. Now, of course, we can take this line of inquiry to some absurd places: if an American director would have directed French actors in a French film, shot in New York (driving a big American car)...But, anyway - so much post - Breathless French style is derived from American style. But a lot of American style is derived from misreadings of French misreadings of American style - have you seen Jarmusch's The Limits of Control? Impossible without Melville...What else should I talk about? The Jazz? Solal's Jazz in Breathless. Perfection. Here? Not really. Again, it's French Jazz, and doesn't really fit NY perfectly. But that's OK - maybe if it was worse, it would be better, like the Jazz in Auf Wiedersehen, Franziska! In any case, I really want to collate scenes from movies from the late '50s and note how many times certain things reoccur - little portable record players with records strewn all over the floor, cool scenes of cigarettes being lit, gas stations - the scene in the recording studio so much like the one in Masculin/Feminin. What would we get out of such lists? Something...something about zeitgeist. Something about transmission. Something about cross - pollination and its relationship to influence, something about modern myths.So if the experience of making this film helped him to know what to do and what not to do in his later masterpieces, then, you know what? It's a beautiful thing. Godard once famously said "It's not blood, it's red". Melville found out some kind of similar thing about the difference between America and...American - isms? Something like that.

random_avenger French director Jean-Pierre Melville is known for directing several classic films such as Bob le flambeur (1956) and Le samouraï (1967), but he also did some acting over the course of his career. However, his only starring role was in his own 1959 crime film Two Men in Manhattan, where he plays a journalist named Moreau who is assigned to find out why a French diplomat named Fèvre-Berthier was absent from a United Nations council meeting. With his photographer friend Delmas (Pierre Grasset), Moreau suspects a female lover might be involved and follows clues from woman to woman in the night of New York City, a place that never sleeps. There also seems to be a car following Moreau and Delmas...Said to be a combination of American film noir and the budding French New Wave movement, Two Men in Manhattan very neatly utilizes the good sides of both styles. The urban street views and skyscrapers look excellent in the glow of the bright ad signs on store marquees and the dark, stark lighting set up for interior scenes is a joy to the eye too. The laid-back jazz soundtrack is highly enjoyable, creating a mood softer than in hard boiled detective noirs, even though the seedy locations would fit in such flicks seamlessly as well.A lot of the film's charm lies on the shoulders of the two protagonists, who suit their roles splendidly. Melville's sad-looking appearance matches his character's melancholic but righteous attitude perfectly, while Grasset makes a great pairing for him as the greedy and amoral Delmas, prone to drinking and sleeping around. Ultimately their opposing approaches to the ethics of journalism are what create one of the main themes of the film; namely, examining the responsibility of the press when publishing stories of delicate nature. Besides the lead duo, the supporting actors do a good job too, from a suicidal stage actress Judith Nelson (Ginger Hall) to a jaded cabaret dancer Bessie Reed (Michèlle Bailly) and a jazz singer Virginia Graham (Glenda Leigh) who we get to see recording a haunting song in a studio.All in all, when a film successfully combines a totally smooth and cool atmosphere with suspense and humour like Two Men in Manhattan does, it just cannot be anything but highly enjoyable. The movie is simply thoroughly entertaining, but since the technical elements are also very skilfully created, there is no reason to skip this one if you're even remotely interested in film noir and French cinema.

jimisalo The main character in this film is Manhattan, as imagined and idolized by Melville. This impression is strengthened by the mostly unknown cast and the director himself playing the male lead. The rudimentary plot is mostly an excuse for Melville to feast on his favorite scenes and images: shiny cars driving through nocturnal city streets, neon signs and all-night bars, sultry women and smoky jazz music. The emotional tension of the film comes from the familiar Melville treatment of men's code of honor and loyalty tested by their weakness, here mostly the temptation of women, money and whiskey. Recommended for fans of Melville and stylish noir films.