Individuality in Jean-Pierre Melville’s Cinema

Someone Who Is Not like Anyone Else

Amir Siadat

1.

In a scene from Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity, Barton Keyes tries to convince his boss in the insurance company that Mr. Dietrichson's idea of committing suicide is questionable and that they should carefully take into account all the aspects before paying life insurance to his wife - Phyllis. What causes the doubt of the persistent insurance agent is the suicide statistics. In the statistical documents that he reads, there is not even one example of a report that someone committed suicide by jumping from the back of the train. If many detective stories are based on similar arguments and presuppositions, it is because both modern bureaucracy and this type of story are deeply dependent on the science of statistics. Categorizing events (for example, any type of calamity and accident) and estimating the factor of risk is a prerequisite for insurance, and the tendency to record and chart in bureaucracy accounting provides detectives with documents such as insurance records, fine sheets, and monthly bills to trace the suspects. In The Samurai, the inspector suspected Jef Costello based on speculation and "possibilities" without solid evidence. Along with him, the audience also wants to know more about this cold-blooded, taciturn and mysterious assassin and penetrate deep into his being. Jef has an introverted personality with a face and body that is often hidden under a hat and coat and seems to have blocked any way of penetration. What attracts the viewer's attention more than the issue of murder is the killer's impenetrability and - on the contrary - the inspector's all-out effort to find his way into Jef’s solitude. Since the inspector does not have any clue to prove what is certain to him, he uses the tracking and eavesdropping devices. Until the final moments, everything seems to go according to his "calculations" and Jef ends up where the inspector expected, but that empty gun upsets all the police equations (as well as the usual formulas of the police genre). The answer to why Jef came to face death in this manner is not known for the inspector, nor for the audience; It is something in the area of privacy and individual ritual; It cannot be explained with any logic - including Barton Keyes logic - and it cannot be observed or classified with any tools and standards. Jef Costello is alone and not like anyone else.

2.

Melville's character has an inner and mysterious life. Although he is always in a shaky situation, his ideals are unwavering. In A Cop, why does Simon knowingly cause his own death by making a fake move and fooling Édouard Coleman? In The Red Circle, why does Corey shelter Vogel on the day of his release, without knowing this escaped criminal? What do we know about Vogel’s past? What was his crime that arresting him is so important for the police? What is the story of the woman who Corey throws away her photo? Why doesn't the pianist who witnessed the crime testify against Jef Costello? Melville is silent on such questions. In his cinema, the mysterious manifestation of the events is sometimes to such an extent that it is as if a force beyond the senses dominates the relations of the story. The series of events that go hand in hand in The Red Circle to the point that Corey and Vogel meet each other, are so strange that it is not logical to consider this friendship as a mere coincidence. It is as if the fate or some kind of telepathy has connected the two together. Another example is The Samurai and the scene where Jef's bird informs him about the presence of listening devices that have been installed in his house. Everything in its natural and contemporary appearance has a sense and state close to ancient stories, and the bird's action is a reminder of a kind of mythical-ritual function. The strange and incomprehensible actions of Simon, Jef, Corey, etc. belong to the realm of ritual, however, it is a kind of individual belief which is the result of self-awareness, will and choice, and this concept should not be mistaken with the ritual as "the destruction of the individual in the group" or " acceptance and repetition of pre-existing customs". In this sense, the action of Melville's character - regardless of the previous extratextual moral judgments - is original and admirable (cinema is always supposed to make us understand in a mischievous way that we are inherently and deeply immoral). The camera carefully captures the details of robbing a jewelry store in The Red Circle or robbing a train in the police station, and we stare at the criminal act with enthusiasm mixed with admiration and even become fascinated by it. The insert shots highlight the person's relationship with objects: hands are opening the door of one of the train compartments with the help of a magnet, and other hands are making a lead bullet (reminiscent of Bresson's cinematographic expression in the Pickpocket, "the film of hands and objects"). Melville's audience is not looking for a story in such situations; Storytelling has been put on hold and has been replaced by contemplation on a "spectacular" act. The audience is watching the performance of a ceremony. It has been said about Jef Costello that when before doing his job, stands in front of the mirror in a stylish dress, arranges his hat carefully and puts on his white gloves, he is more like a magician that is going to go on the "stage". It has also been said that when Jansen, who is in a disheveled state, wretched and drown in drugs and alcohol, wakes up with the motivation to participate in the robbery and goes to work with a well-mannered appearance, as if he wants to participate in a magnificent banquet. In Melville's world, being a gangster requires a certain appearance and manners, and ultimately a certain death. No matter how criminal the act is, for his characters, it is a sacred ritual that should be done in the most beautiful manner. In the light of such a view, the coexistence of opposite elements becomes possible, and delinquency and crime are mixed with decency and elegance, and many of the iconic identifiers of the genre (such as raincoat, fedora hat, weapon, etc.) find a new meaning and become the bearer of a ritual meaning. The hat that falls from Silien's head in the last scene of Le Doulos (1962) has a unique status in the history of cinema.

3.

From what is usually quoted from Melville, it can be assumed that the sanctity that his characters regard for their work comes partly from his own attitude towards cinema as a sacred profession. He called being behind the camera as participating in a pseudo-religious ceremony that should be performed with special manners. He was lonely like his characters and did not fit under the classified titles of the era. He was a filmmaker with a distinctive identity and signature that went his own way and created his own personal world. He was attached to the eastern culture and the Buddhist roots of the trend that gave a decisive role to fate in his most important works with obvious references. He borrowed elements from Eastern mysticism, separated them from the context in which they had a familiar meaning and used them in an incongruous text such as a gangster film. It can also be said about other different and conflicting forces; For example, the plots in which dramatic focus and the strategy of creating ambiguity are used equally and parallelly. One side is a genre with rules tending towards totality and unity, and the other side is a filmmaker that defies frameworks. If the genre wants everything to reinforce the central drama and threw away every extra frame and movement, Melville often preferred to dwell on the details; His films - in this aspect - were related to jazz music, which he loved so much, because in jazz music, rhythm has the same value as melody and sometimes more than that. Genre speeds up action, but Melville favored slower rhythms. The meditative mood of many moments of his cinema is because he wants to stop and linger. His planned discipline was a measure to contain the energy of the genre's exciting cinema. However, the final work was not devoid of suspense and excitement. When we watch his films, we feel that Huston and Bresson are compatible. Undoubtedly, a huge part of what gave shape to his cinema goes back to his personal experience during the war and participation in the French resistance movement. The resistance movement consisted of armed men who gathered for a purposeful struggle; Men with a certain ideal for whom concepts such as responsibility, loyalty and betrayal were very meaningful. They were alone and separated from their wives and children. One can put the Army of Shadows next to Melville's gangster films and clearly see that at least part of the ritualistic characteristics of Melville's gangster comes from war and its idealistic male relationships. Patterns and prototypes have not dragged Melville's world to themselves; He is the one who has messed with the familiar elements of the genre and given them an individual flavor. And now, after several decades, his cinema has become a model. Isn't the presence of signs that evoke Melville in different ways - sometimes directly and openly, sometimes hidden and behind the scenes - in the works of a diverse range of filmmakers (Tarantino, Jarmusch, McDonagh, Audiard, etc.) is not proof that he is still next to us?

4.

Silence is inseparable from Melville's movies. This element can be traced from people's taciturnity to putting aside words and emphasizing on the sound of the environment. One can mention The Samurai and the scene of the agents entering Jef's house to set up the microphone, or the scene of robbing a jewelry store in The Red Circle. Melville's cinema is an example of "recreation of silence" in such moments. In the absence of words, the sounds of the environment act like music: the sound of touching objects, the sound of walking, the sound of the cafe, the sound of cars and trains, the sound of birds, rain and wind. In his first film, The Silence of the Sea, through this structural principle, Melville chooses an indirect way to penetrate to the heart of a historical event: an old man and his nephew have decided to behave as if a German officer who occupies one of the rooms in their house for a temporary residence, is not existing. The officer comes to the sitting room every night, makes a long speech about the war, literature, music, Germany and France, and then bows politely, says "Good night" and leaves. During the whole time that he is walking, talking warmly, the old man and the girl are silent and motionless, while the music of burning firewood or the ticking of the clock has given their silence more intense weight. In this mismatch of speech and silence, we do not hear a word about the affection that gradually forms between the German officer and the girl, but we feel it; On the one hand, the camera looks for a way into the soul of the German officer, and on the other hand, the girl, although she is busy knitting, with every slight tremor in her face, every small turn of her head and every peeping, reveals a part of her hidden feelings. When she stops weaving, everything is clear: her hands have spoken. At the moment of farewell, the girl responds to the officer's words for the first and last time: "Goodbye". The image indicates the longing of connection and the word speaks of disconnection. Language is used as a communication tool to connect the sender and receiver of the message, but the message itself is a sign of separation. This "goodbye" is a struggle to begin with, and the word reveals a truth, though it seems to hide it. Although the German officer is judged based on the "Nazi" label at the beginning, both by the residents of the occupied land and by the audience, but following the dominance of psychological aspects and the gradual differentiation of the terrifying figure, the mold identity that was made of him cracks and collapses and a figure worthy of respect appears. He says somewhere that he feels pity for the beast in the story of "The Beauty and the Beast". It is obvious why. The Silence of the Sea is, in a sense, another version of that story.

5.

Innocent Yvon loses his job for forgery and goes to jail soon after. After his release, he commits to murder to get money, and in this way, he aligns himself with the image that has been unfairly attributed to him. Bresson called his last film L'Argent. To what extent can the world outside the prison expecting Yvon be similar to the world that Corey of The Red Circle faces after his release? Is the law of these two worlds the same? If we remember Bresson's film with its many inserts of money being exchanged, it is hard to forget the untouched and stacked bills in the suitcase in Melville's film. The pursuit of money in The Red Circle is such a pervasive principle that it invalidates even the dual scheme of police and gangsters - as representatives of law and lawlessness (the proposal to rob a jewelry store is given to Corey by an official prison officer). In The Samurai, Jef reveals the rule of his profession with unique coolness: "They paid me for this." When he goes to a suburban garage to change his license plate and get a gun, Bresson is remembered more than anyone. Jef and the owner of the garage do not exchange words. Apparently, what we see has happened over and over again: the garage owner finishes his work quickly, Jef pays him and leaves. However, in Melville's cinema, the individual ritual somehow violates the general law of money: Jansen in The Red Circle does not want a share of jewelry. For him, stealing was a test to recover his lost self-respect and liberate him from depression. It is enough for him to pass this test and regain his former pride. Corey also wants as much money for an old friend as he needs, no more. At the end of The Samurai, in a moment when we do not expect anything, he once again stands in front of the world he built to complete his message by repeating a statement - this time with a different meaning: "They paid me for this." In a world where money is the complete embodiment of the disappearance of human nature, one person is remembering a lost truth through an absolutely human-ritual action. His choice, no matter how illogical and irrational, is enviable. With his self-willed death, he paid his debt and fulfilled his personal ritual, not only in front of the law of his superiors, but as if he stood in front of the law of everyone and in a way the law of the world. This death is perhaps the extract of a cinema which each moment of it is a celebration of individuality. In The Silence of the Sea, when the German officer is leaving the old man's house, he notices a book by Anatole France, and his attention is drawn to one of the sentences in the book, which the old man deliberately marked in order to show respect to him: “How glorious it is when a soldier disobeys the command of crime”.