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The tough guys in Yves Boisset’s crime drama answer revenge with revenge, and Michel Bouquet’s rogue cop commits outrageous acts of lawlessness to nail his partner’s killer. The French censors were up at arms over Boisset’s slight to police honor, yet the subject isn’t corruption — everything is ‘honor and decency.’ A fine gallery of Gallic thugs fills out the cast; both they and the attitude toward law and order are a step beyond Jean-Pierre Melville, but not an improvement. With standout work from Michel Constantin, Théo Sarapo, Henri Garcin and Bernard Fresson.

The Cop aka Un condé

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1970 / B&w / 1:66 widescreen / 98 min. / Street Date September 6, 2022 / available through Kino Lorber / 24.95

Starring: Michel Bouquet, Françoise Fabian, Gianni Garko, Michel Constantin, Théo Sarapo, Henri Garcin, Anne Carrère, Bernard Fresson, Pierre Massimi, Roger Lumont.

Cinematography: Jean-Marc Ripert

Film Editor: Albert Jurgenson, Vincenzo Tomassi

Original Music:...

Auteurist film books from the early ’70s touted the crime pictures of Jean-Pierre Melville, a Yankeephile Frenchman who chose a new name for himself and embraced crime pix because he loved John Huston’s The Asphalt Jungle. This tale of utter ruthlessness among thieves is one of Melville’s best. The great Jean-Paul Belmondo and Serge Reggiani leading a superior cast of underworld losers: Fabienne Dali, Michel Piccoli, Jean Desailly and Monique Hennessy.

Le Doulos

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1962 / B&w / 1:66 widescreen / 109 min. / Street Date July 2, 2019 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Jean-Paul Belmondo, Serge Reggiani, Fabienne Dali, Michel Piccoli, Jean Desailly, René Lefèvre, Aimé De March, Monique Hennessy, Carl Studer.

Cinematography: Nicolas Hayer

Film Editor: Monique Bonnot

Original Music: Paul Misraki

Written by Jean-Pierre Melville from a book by Pierre Lesou

Produced by Carlo Ponti, Georges De Beauregard

Directed by Jean-Pierre Melville

Having plumbed the libraries of some of...

Jean-Pierre Melville in his own film, Two Men in Manhattan“A man isn't tiny or giant enough to defeat anything”—Yukio MishimaA voracious cinephile in his early youth, Jean-Pierre Grumbach's daily intake of films was interrupted by the Second World War when he enlisted in the Ffl (Forces Français Libres) and adopted the nom de guerre by which he's still known to these days: Jean-Pierre Melville. A tribute to his literary hero, Hermann Melville, and his novel Pierre: or the Ambiguities, the director would have his name officially changed after the war. The latter was to shape and inform many of his films and arguably all of his world-view, characterized by a sort of ethical cynicism where anti-fascism is understood as a moral duty rather than an act of heroic courage. Profoundly anti-rhetoric and filled with a terse dignity, his films about the Resistance, Army of Shadows (1969) above all,...