User Reviews

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.

'Nothing seems real. You don't exist. I must wake up' moans the failed suicide and actress, as she is gently pressured by journalist Moreau into revealing the whereabouts of her lover, missing UN diplomat, womaniser and Resistance hero Fevre-Berthier. Melville's most realistic film, shot amid the bright-neon signs of New York, is also a pure dream, its narrative unreeling over one very dark night, swamping its protagonists into mere silhouettes or fragments, as they walk and drive and drive and walk in an echo-laden, empty silence, punctuated by fierce jazz squalls.

'Deux Hommes' is generally considered one of Melville's least successful films, and the director rejects it in his famous interviews with Rui Nogeuira, claiming that its failure made him seriously rethink his way of making films. It's not easy to see why it should be so disapproved of. The narrative is brisk if conventional, as it follows a traditional detective story route of problem, investigation, solution. Perhaps what is most objectionable is the film's theme, the idea that sometimes it is honourable and proper to conceal the truth from the public.

I may be biased - this was my first Melville film, eight years ago, beginning a love affair that is even more intense today - but I think 'Deux Hommes' is pretty good, for a number of reasons. Most immediate is Melville's use of light and darkness, the way he works between blazing neon and dense obscurity, as he does between noise and silence or sharp montage and Wyler-like deep-focused long-takes. This visualises the theme of the film, the darkness of the 'victim''s absence brought to light by the investigative journalists, with truth thrown back into the darkness.

Although Melville's heroes seem less 'deconstructed' here than in his most famous films, he uses subtly elaborate means to undermine them. Throughout, they are in a position of power, moving with ease through the different worlds of New York, from burlesque houses and brothels to expensive bourgeois apartments, linking two seemingly disparate realms. When interviewing people who knew Fevre-Berthier, Moreau remains rigidly framed, while his interlocutors are shot from different angles, cut up, fragmented, figuring his unbreakable integrity, and their dissimulating multiple identities.

But Moreau, for all his supposed decency, is never as powerful as he thinks. His firm point of view is often broken up by unmotivated angles that problematise scenes he dominates. He is frequently swallowed up in darkness, his authority literally disappearing. God-like camera angles looking down on him mirror the car that follows him - unlike a conventional detective, he has less information than we do, and so is emasculated. His body is sometimes broken up by Melville's compositions, particularly when the pair come out of Capitol Studios, and are shot from inside a car, watched by an unseen stranger, or in the climactic chase, as he keeps getting out and back into the car, his head repeatedly lopped off.

this undermining is linked to the theatrical metaphors strewn throughout. The four women interviewed are all linked to performance - an actress, a singer, a call-girl pretending to be Marilyn Monroe, and a stripper. Dalmas mimics Fevre-Berthier, and invents a different death for the victim, just as Moreau and his boss finally do. The men play the role of brother and friend to sneak into the hospital. They repeatedly enact what they're going to do or see. Throughout the film we get shots of the surface of New York, as if nothing has changed, but once we have penetrated the world beneath the glitter, it is impossible to take these signs, or these men, in the same way again.

Unusually for a Melville 'crime' film, the protagonists are detectives and not gangsters. However, Melville uses similar tropes to his gangster films to further undermine his heroes. The hospital scene is familiar from these films, the shaking up of someone with information, Moreau waiting outside like a boss, while his henchman does the dirty work. Moreau, throughout the sequence, with his 'gentle' persuasiveness, becomes genuinely sinister.

As they wait with the corpse in his lover's apartment, Moreau and Dalmas are visited by the editor, the 'Boss', wearing shades - his dealing with the body, his wearing shades indoors, his re-arrangement of the truth are all gangster staples, and yet he is the editor of a reputable magazine, determined to bury the truth about a Churchill-praised Resistance hero.

Melville is often acclaimed/reviled as France's greatest Americophile. It is here significant that Melville the director is also the lead actor, because just as the actor goes through a real geographical space, the director goes through an imagined cultural space of favoured American landmarks, Time Square, Broadway, Mercury Theatre, Time Magazine, Capitol Studios etc. The anti-hero's name is Delmas, a reference perhaps to John Dalmas, Chandler's prototype Philip Marlowe.

This kind of allusionism further destabilises the film's realism, as do narratively irrelevant shots of cigarette packets, the brand smoked by Melville's one-time friend Godard. Melville is always pushing back the limits of his genre, the hilarious, 'A Bout de Souffle'-like jazz-warnings to remind us of the car following our heroes, the car-lights seem to wink at us, as if we're both in on the joke on the heroes. In a very striking scene, flagrantly breaking 'plausibility', Moreau gets into the driver's seat with the address card of their next destination. The soundtrack suggests they start up and drive off, but the camera stays in an immovable car on the driver holding the card. In the penultimate scene, as Delmas lays slumped on the floor, the band that had been the act become the audience; a trumpeter approaches and blows with mock-melancholy.

There is so much more in this deceptive, short film that deserves a reconsideration, especially for its incredibly detailed technique that never forces itself, but is very rich. But the film works best for me as a (Hustonian?) study in failure, of the film's other hapless womaniser, Delmas, a great talent doused in impotence and drink, prepared to do vicious things for a break, a man who could have had everything, but seems shell-shocked by life, who can only find beatitude through alcohol. Rather him than the deeply creepy probity of his partner.

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.

Melville is clearly enjoying himself in this picture. As director, there is a virtuosic flourish to many of the extended shots and the night-time cinematography. As actor, the constant smirk on his character's face is surely that of Melville himself, playing out his personal fantasy as a film noir character in his favourite city.

When the story arrives, it's revealed to be an ethical dilemma: our two principals (Melville as an Agence France Presse journalist and Pierre Grasset as his photographer buddy) discover a French diplomat and ex-Resistance hero dead of a heart attack in an actress's apartment. Do they report the truth, cover it up to preserve the guy's reputation or sensationalise it even more to make a fortune from the exclusive?

Melville was by no means a great actor, but his baleful eyes, bland smile and spiffy bow tie in this film give him a kind of sleazy charm that brings to mind Peter Lorre. His character's name (Moreau) is a pun on "moraux", which means moral, and indeed he is intended to be the moral centre of the film. There are moments, though, when he seems genuinely sinister: when he peeps on a bare-breasted dancer in her dressing room (the scene was censored in the UK), and when he looms threateningly over another girl who has just attempted suicide.

"Deux hommes..." is the most New Wave of all Melville's films. The raw, documentary-style shots, the improvised feel to some of the scenes (Melville makes frequent mistakes when speaking English), the use of real locations and untrained actors (including Melville himself), were jarring to audiences and critics at the time. In the light of Godard and Truffaut we can now better appreciate the type of film-making that Melville helped to inaugurate. Nevertheless, Melville regarded "Deux hommes..." as a failed experiment, returning in his subsequent films to a more classical approach.

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 -- his audition 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 looks and acts 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 Jean-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.

For a director whose best films are absolute masterclasses in tone, this one takes a while to find its voice.

A French UN delegate goes missing in New York City, and a French reporter (played by Melville himself) and his photographer friend go on the hunt by tracking down three women, one of whom is suspected to be his mistress.

I love a good mystery, especially one shot on location in late-50's New York, and the "over the course of a single night" conceit can be delightful. But the characters initially read flat, and the stakes feel nonexistent until we get towards the end of the story. Once certain characters' true colors are revealed, it becomes a treatise on the moral responsibility of journalists and storytellers, and, Melville being Melville, French WWII resistance comes into play. It's not terribly nuanced, but it's an effective moral tale, revealing the same sort of deep humanism that underlies Army of Shadows.

Visually, it's a strange, inconsistent blend. Much feels amateurish, like a quickly-shot newsreel, which isn't inconsistent with the sorts of noir and noir-tinged 40's and 50's American urban films Melville is riffing on (The Naked City looms particularly large). But it doesn't feel quite in the wheelhouse a director whose use of meticulous, almost meditative cinematography is a distinct calling card.

That said, there are some incredible shots, including a slow tracking shot in a jazz studio, which is now near the top of my "scenes featuring musical performances where it's clear they're actually playing the music" list.

Overall, it's a less essential entry in the Jean-Pierre Melville catalog. But if you've watched the big ones, and want to see a great director directing himself in a good movie, check it out.

Capturing the ethical and tonal air of noir and crafting a love letter to New York City takes precedence over filmic construction, casting (some of the acting is atrocious), and story structure. But the fast, loose, low-budget approach gives it a New Wave vibe that still feels fresh.

Hayer's cinematography, particularly the exterior shots of Manhattan, turns the film into a living work, an authentic document of an actual place in time. These exterior shots are done in wides, often held for too long, suggesting that Melville's gaze is reluctant to get back to artifice.

The music drops can be heavy handed and redundant, but there's some great jazz here, and the last reel uses the music incredibly effectively, helping tie together some sequences that are absolute cinematic gold.

As mentioned, the exceptionally beautiful women we encounter were not hired for their acting chops. The mystery doesn't amount to much, and, in our current climate, the idea of newspaper men burying a story about the infidelity of a public servant for "ethical" and patriotic reasons doesn't sit all that well, but everything else is wicked fun.

This is a serious step back for Melville. It's not bad, but this is the film that feels like it was a promising young filmmaker's first film not the follow up to Bob le Flambeur. The exteriors were filmed in New York, and the interiors were filmed on sound stages in Paris, creating a curious mixture of the grungy exteriors with pristine interiors. However, the duality of the physical production is a small part of what affects the film negatively. It's a noir mystery where the actual mystery is not very well built to the point where it feels like our main characters are just kind of wandering around. It begins to redeem itself by the halfway point, but it can't quite do enough in the end to safe the whole thing. Almost, but not quite enough.

A French diplomat to the United Nations has gone missing after failing to show up for a vote at the UN. A French publication sends their ace reporter Moreau (Melville) out to find him. Moreau picks up the alcoholic photojournalist Delmas (Pierre Grasset) to help, using three pictures he took of Fevre-Berthier, the diplomat, with three different women. This is the basis of their entire search over the course of one night, three pictures Delmas took. Is this this entirety of Fevre-Berthier's social life away from his wife? Were these pictures taken when he and any of the women just happened to be standing near each other? It's the sort of shortened setup to a film that a mystery can get built on, but the execution of it, with Moreau waking Delmas up and Delmas immediately grabbing these three pictures feels so staccato without any real effort to build any sense of reality or atmosphere even.

It gets a bit weirder as the two men go from woman to woman, each easily found, and each giving the pair brushoffs in oddly short scenes that are filmed in quick, staccato fashion. There seems to be no flow from one to the next. There's no delving deeper into the mystery with each one. They each seem completely disassociated from the rest, and three of the four women they go to see (the fourth is a prostitute who specializes in diplomats that Delmas knows) don't contribute anything. I think I can see what Melville was trying to do, though.

These interactions are supposed to be thematic in point. They're too short and don't actually do what I think they're supposed to do, but they're supposed to be about a modern form of a moral code that undergirds a lot of Melville's work. Each woman seems to be a purported element of the double life that Fevre-Berthier was leading. I couldn't tell you what each of the women are supposed to actually represent (especially the prostitute that doesn't actually know Fevre-Berthier), but I think that was the idea.

The movie feels kind of aimless with Moreau and Delmas going from woman to woman until they settle in a diner and hear the news about how Judith Nelson (Ginger Hall), the first woman they met and an actress in a play in the city, attempted commit suicide during the intermission of her performance. It's here that there's suddenly some drive as the pair go over to the hospital, talk their way into her room, and get some key pieces of information out of her like the fact that Fevre-Berthier is dead in her apartment. The two main characters begin to differentiate here as well.

Up until this point, they were mostly interchangeable except that Delmas would pull out a flask and drink from it now and again. The clipped conversations with the women really didn't help this, but when confronting Judith, they take markedly different approaches. Moreau is the good cop, and Delmas is the bad cop. When they get to the apartment and find Fevre-Berthier dead on Judith's couch, fully dressed and rather uncompromising, Delmas decides that his fortune is to be made here if he wants it. All it will require is changing some things, like pulling Fevre-Berthier's body onto a disheveled bed and prominently featuring Judith's picture alongside him in a far more sensationalist photo that he could sell to newspapers for significantly more money. Moreau's boss comes down, Moreau puts the body back, and the two demand that Delmas give up the negative of the photo he took.

This contrast between how Moreau deals with the situation and how Delmas tries to take advantage of it is the most interesting thing in the movie. I really wish that the first half of the film had been working towards this. Maybe cutting out at least a couple of the other women to allow more focus on the woman who does matter while giving our two main characters the time to talk about stuff would have helped.

We also get the addition of Fevre-Berthier's daughter Anne (Christiane Eudes), who had been tailing Moreau since his got his assignment at the magazine's office, tagging along when Moreau discovers that Delmas hasn't actually given over the film and was probably going to find a major magazine to sell it to that very night. I think she's there to help focus the human element and effects of what Delmas is going to try to do, but, again, I wish she was more prominent early, maybe tagging along for some part of the search, offering tidbits about Fevre-Berthier's reasoning for having a mistress in the first place.

The second half is far more interesting than the first, but I don't think it quite saves the film as a whole. Even if the second half were outright great (it still feels a bit unfocused), it probably wouldn't save the film from its first half which really is just meandering and kind of pointless. After the successes of Quand tu liras cette lettre and Bob le Flambeur, I really wouldn't have expected this kind of reversion to a less assured type of filmmaking and storytelling. I don't want to say that this feels like a hastily assembled production in order to justify an expensive trip to New York, but is kind of what it feels like.

However, I think I'm overselling my issues with this movie. It's okay. It's not bad. Melville, in his only starring role, plays his ideal man, a man of cool savoir-faire and specific morals, with the right kind of detachment. The halfway point onward is really quite good with suddenly some stakes and a sense of purpose for our character injected into the action. I think the film is alright, but the stepdown from the heights of his previous two films makes Melville's fifth feature film as director a disappointment.

In French (Deux hommes dans Manhattan) is a 1959 New York City based French film-noir directed by Jean-Pierre Melville. Starring, Jean- Pierre Melville, Pierre Grasset, Music by Martial Solal, Christian Chevallier Cinematography by Nicolas Hayer

Jean-Pierre Melville filmed both a Noir love letter and, almost a time capsule video documentary of 1958 New York City. From the opening bars of the jazzy score and Googie style credits that run over a wonderful (looking out the back window of a cab) trip down through traffic, a traffic of tail fin adorned cars, traveling South along Broadway, and then on 7th Avenue right through the heart of manically lit Times Square you know you are in for a special visual treat.

Melville's New York is the real deal. Its not some Hollywood back lot dressed up like New York City. Melville's New York is a dreary smoggy winter sky New York. The old New York that belched black coal smoke by the ton into the atmo, a New York of steaming manholes in streets that were choked with Buses and Checker Cabs. Melville's New York was a Holiday Day New York festooned with Christmas decorations two days before December 25th.

Two journalists become de facto detectives tracking down a missing diplomat through the underside of New York.

Pierre Grasset is great as the smart-alek Delmas his picaresque portrayal is very effective playing against Melville who is relatively somber. The film has but few flaws, probably the most notable for me are the interior shots of the E.D.D.I.E. whorehouse, the actresses playing the hookers seem to be speaking English phonetically, and ditto for the stripper Bessie Reed or she may just be dubbed. The excellent soundtrack is by Christian Chevallier and Martial Solal. 8/10

Two Men In Manhattan is available on DVD from Cohen Films it's in French with English subtitles.

At the UN today, the French representative didn't show though few made much notice of it. However, a French reporter is given the assignment to look for the guy and see why he disappeared. To help, he gets the help of a super-sleazy photographer, Pierre, and the pair bounce about New York following leads. They think this well respected man might have a mistress--and several photos of him with ladies might help them locate the guy.

Eventually they locate the man and then comes an important decision- -what to do with this information. The photographer, naturally, wants to make the most of it and spread sensationalistic photos everywhere. The other guy is decent and tries to get his new partner to do the right thing.

I love the films of Jean-Pierre Melville--at least up until this one. It's not a terrible film but nothing like the great film noir features Melville made (mostly in the 60s and 70s). But it did have a homemade feel--cheap and definitely more French New Wave than his usual more polished work. Lots of cheap stock footage of New York was used and so many of the English-speaking actors sounded anything but like New Yorkers. French audiences probably wouldn't have recognized this, but to an American the accents often don't fit or sometimes sound like foreigners TRYING to sound American...and failing. Mildly interesting and clearly the last portion is by far the most interesting. Plus, being a French film it has some nudity, lesbianism and other plot elements you just wouldn't have found in an American film of the time.

Melville keeps the story going pretty well, but this is a weak film compared to his best efforts. Shot partly on location in New York, and also in a Paris studio, with many of the supporting players having had to learn their parts phonetically (Monique Hennessy is particularly clumsy with her lines), this is a noir that shows its low budget and lack of inspiration in places. The attempt to find the missing diplomat ends in a woman's apartment. We get a five minute speech from the two reporters's boss about how great Fevre-Berthier was, it's a dull scene.

If you are looking for a noir with verve and great music, why not try Ascenseur pour l'echafaud, with REAL actors and Miles Davis's great score.

This is a road movie. We travel with two men through New York's nightlife in one night (hence the title of the film). The stops are Broadway performers, recording studios, burlesque dancers, brothels, iconic places such as Time Square, the UN building, Rockefeller Center, etc. and along the way we breathe the atmosphere, a jazz trumpet, the neon lights, hot dogs, shadows and dark alleys. The pretext for this ride (in this case the "plot": an investigation of a UN delegate disappearance and some dilemmas of yellow journalism) is just a pretext, as in any good journey. Recommended for road movie fans, New Wave connoisseurs, New Yorkers, jazz lovers, nightlife owls and noir-ish buffs.

Two Men in Manhattan pushes the envelope on everything but quality. Sure, it has lesbians, bare breasts and loads of sex references, but does it help? Say hello of Jean-Pierre Melville's cheap and signature-less alter-ego.

The master of French crime goes to what might be the noir capital of the world. We see New Yorks streets at night, and our entertainers throw in a heave jazz score as well - the making of a masterpiece? I wish.

From the moment the first credit popped on screen I got the feeling that something was wrong. I shrugged it off, but just as soon as I was ready to embrace yet another great Melville film we are thrown into a whirlpool of disfigured English. Apparently it's only purpose is to show as that we are at the UN. The dialog was clearly not of any importance, and the sound department sure made that clear.

I'm sure this introduction isn't as long as it felt like, but that's hardly no excuse. To make things worse we get to spend our first few scenes with the most unimaginative and unimportant small talk. For the next 30 minutes or so I wasn't even sure if there was a plot. Sure, they are looking for a guy but beyond that it felt so empty and devoid of any real direction.

And did you expect great visuals? This whole deal feels like a cheap 40's docudrama after it had a stroke. One possibility is that Melville was testing out some new wave aesthetics, another is that he got drunk and let his assistant do the film for him.

Not to say it's entirely bad. The cinematography is more or less there, despite the fact that the compositions couldn't be blander. Had it been some unknown director who was behind this I'd just brush it off as the mediocrity it is - but despite the fact that it isn't really bad it almost feels like a stab in the back from Melville. He had everything he needed, but decided to go to autopilot. All I can say is that there's most certainly a reason why this is his least known.

The photographer, Delmas, steals the keys to Judith Nelson's apartment from her handbag after she has attempted suicide and uses those keys to break in to her apartment with Moreau. But how is she going to get back into her apartment after she leaves the hospital?

Aside from that, you can see that this film is a Frenchman's view of New York: Melville recreates New York through French eyes. The story itself is fundamentally French, with references to World War II and the French Resistance that have nothing to do with the plot itself.

Still, Melville is an interesting cinéaste who was obsessed with America. Born Jean-Pierre Grumbach, he adopted the nom de guerre "Melville" when he served in the French Resistance because of his fondness for Herman Melville and retained it afterwards.

Pike Slip was a lower Manhattan docking space. The Pike Slip Inn existed at least in 2015. The gifted French jazz pianist and composer Martial Solal plays the piano at the Pike Slip Inn in the film.

Jean-Pierre Grumbach, who decided to change his surname to Melville after reading Moby Dick, loved the United States, its massive cars of the 1950s and 1960s, and was perhaps the most American of all French directors of his day. He even drove about Paris in a massive Cadillac, complete with Stetson hat and cowboy boots. Thus, it makes perfect sense that he should invest pretty much all he had, including his inheritance, to pay for DEUX HOMMENS DANS MANHATTAN in 1959, which he would always describe as his "love letter" to New York.

The film did not rate a box office success but critics saw in it some of the qualities they had already detected in BOB LE FLAMBEUR (1956), and J-P Melville always blamed his own role in the film, and especially the dark rings under his eyes, for the film's failure to achieve visibility.

Grasset is perhaps the most interesting character in DEUX HOMMES. He first emerges as a heavy drinking and unprincipled photographer who will take snapshots of anyone that can earn him money, dead or alive. By the end, he has developed a conscience and gives what had been up to that point a rather cynical film, hitherto unsuspected decency and meaning.

Considering that it is a shoestring production done on far less than even C noir films cranked out by studios in the late 1940s and early 50s, I think it deserves watching, not least for capturing the spirit of NY in the late 1950s, despite some seedy surroundings popping up every now and then.

I readily admit that I like Melville's work very much, but I think anyone interested in movies needs to watch the works of this great director.