Quand tu liras cette lettre

Max Trivet is a garage mechanic, boxer, thief and local gigolo. When his seduction of a young shop girl turns to rape, the girl's sister Thérèse, an ex-nun, plans her revenge. However, it appears that even the austere Thérèse may not be immune to his charms...

Many of the iconic Melville elements are present already in this early film: the big American cars, the scenes with night club dancers rehearsing their act, the long raincoat and hat which Max wears... The plot is more melodramatic than we would expect from the director's later work, but Melville complicates this with ambiguities that add considerably to the interest of the story: Max is portrayed as cruel and cynical, yet also sympathetic; while Thérèse, played by the singer Juliette Greco, is so cold and impassive it is hard to guess, even at the end of the film, what her feelings and intentions have been towards Max.

The use of music is very interesting in this movie, each of the main characters being given not just their own theme but their own instrument: an accordion for Max, a church organ for Thérèse, a harpsichord for her sister Denise, and a piano for the married woman whom Max seduces. There is some striking cinematography, too, notably in the scene on the beach at night, with Thérèse and Max appearing as silhouettes against the turbulent sea.

This seems to be one of the forgotten Melville films. As far as I can tell it has never had an American home video release, and it's unavailable on any streaming platform in the United States. I had to purchase a copy from France to get my hands on it. It's unfortunate, too, because this feels like the first Melville film. He'd made two films beforehand, but those were the works of almost any talented young French filmmaker from the era, not the work of the man who made Le Cercle Rouge or Le Samourai. Many of the motifs and visual markers of a Melville film are here in some of their earliest forms (the club set is straight out of Le Cercle Rouge). It's also Melville's first film that feels open and unconfined, unconstrained by a tiny budget, and is his most complex narrative to date. This is an accomplished work that more fans of the filmmaker should see.

A novitiate at a convent, Therese (Juliette Greco), is given the news of her parents' death in a car accident. She had entered the convent primarily as a way to secure her younger sister's dowry of the stationary shop her parents ran in Cannes, ensuring that it all went to her so that she could marry well. With their parents dead, Therese decides to leave the convent and manage the shop for her sister, Denise (Irene Galter), who is still a minor. At the same time, a young mechanic and boxer, Max (Philippe Lemaire), is a wayward soul who picks up women through his job and displaying his anatomy while boxing. Into his net comes Irene (Yvonne Sanson), a woman married to a wealthy madman (as she puts it), alone in Cannes and obviously attracted to the young boxer.

The two narratives coexist without much interaction for a while. Therese manages the shop and Denise, treating her more like her own child than sister. Max steadily seduces Irene until she seems to reject him, leading him to work with Biquet (Daniel Cauchy), a bellhop in the hotel, to sneak into her room to steal her jewels. When she wakes up during the robbery, Max dominates her and they enter a sexual relationship where she keeps him as her chauffeur. At the same time, Max runs into the pretty Denise on the street, rather aggressively hitting on her but coming up unsuccessful.

Things turn when Therese sends Denise on a series of errands, one of which is to go to Irene's hotel room and collect payment for some stationary they had sold her. Irene is not there, but Max is there, alone. The interaction goes from playful to violent, ending with Max raping Denise, leading Denise to write a letter to her sister with only vague references to what has happened (the opening line being source of the film's title) and a suicide attempt. Therese figures out what happened, and the second half of the film is a battle of wills between Therese and Max.

When Denise finally tells Therese what actually happened, she brings Max to the house and forces him to propose to her. This hard woman, almost a nun who seemed so sheltered from the world in her convent, completely dominates Max, forcing him into right action, but Max isn't a big fan of right action. He begins with what may be a fiction of professing his love to Therese in order to get under his skin, but the more time goes on, the more he seems convinced of the idea that he does love her. When the girls' grandparents give the engaged couple one hundred gold sols, Max swipes it but waits for Therese to follow, which she does.

The confrontation between the two on the beaches of Cannes is two things happening at once, and it's fascinating to watch. Being outside of the characters' heads (the first time in a Melville film that there is no voiceover), we watch these two speak but can't be sure if either of them are telling the truth. Max could have just run off with the money to join Biquet, who has run off to Morocco, but he did wait for Therese, stealing her passport in the process to, as he says, ensure that she won't accidentally forget it because he is convinced that she loves him too. She, locked in his arms like a lover, speaks plainly about how he cannot love and that she wishes years of torment upon him before God forgives him and brings Max into His grace. The finale is Max waiting at a nothing little station between Cannes and Marseilles for Therese after Therese sends Denise to their grandparents, shutting down the store, and getting on the train to Marseilles. Tension mounts as we are unsure of what happens, but Therese remains true to herself.

I've really enjoyed Melville's first two films, but this is something special. The host of characters, all going in their own directions for the first half of the film, never feels out of control. He's tightly in control of the narrative and the characters' movements within it. When things come together, it never feels arbitrary or artificial, the ground having been laid so strongly beforehand. On top of that, I feel like this is Melville's most accomplished film visually up to this point. La Silence de la Mer was mostly filmed adeptly in a small room, never flashy but also limited by the small space in which everything was set. Les Enfants Terribles expanded the visual scope a fair bit, especially in the mansion. However, in Quand tu liras cette letter, there's a visual confidence in terms of shot composition that feels like Melville becoming far more confident of his abilities, intentionally placing characters at specific points in the frame for subtextual and aesthetic reasons. It's a good looking picture, is what I'm saying.

Jean-Pierre Melville was steadily coming into his own artistically as he made his first few films, and this was the film that gave him enough financial success to be able to start his own small studio in Paris. That it's been all but forgotten in his filmography is a bit of a shame. I blame Gaumont for not really providing any American home video distribution. Surely someone like Kino would love to put this thing on disc. Not that I care, I have the French release and it's pretty.

Novitiate Juliette Gréco is summoned from the nunnery when her parents are killed in a car crash. If she does not return to the stationery store and run it, her sister, Irene Galter will go to the grandparents' farm and the store will be sold. So she bows her head and accepts this as the will of G*d, or at least the scenarist. At the same time, Philippe Lemaire, mechanic, boxer, seducer of anything with hair longer than his, and budding socioopath, begins carrying on an affair with rich Yvonne Sanson, looking forward to enjoying her employment back in Brussels. He kills her by accident, trying to slaughter his accomplice, but the judge can't talk himself into having him arrested. No need! Here comes Miss Gréco, telling him that since he raped Miss Galter, who tried to commit suicide but failed, he is going to propose to her in front of their grandparents, and if ever she even suspects he doesn't love her, here's the gun to prove her sister does. And of course, he confesses he's actually in love with Miss Gréco, and insists she's in love with him, because reasons.

Got that? I was at the end of the movie and still didn't know who felt what about whom. Director Jean-Pierre Melville has Miss Gréco as frozen-faced as someone who's just had a botox injection. It's beautifully shot on the Riviera, and Miss Sanson drives an enormous Cadillac one-seat convertible, courtesy of what we are told is a psychopathic husband. Could Melville, working from some one else's script for whatever reason he had (money?) just hate everyone because he's too cool for all this?

Maybe. But then, someone would have to act sincere.

Well, okay, there's no singing and dancing, but look at what it does have: the Riviera, fast cars, luxury hotels, prizefighting, a gigolo-thief, symbolism, irony, rape, and nuns. Therese, the would-be nun, is snatched from the convent at nearly the last minute and returned to a world which, warmly bourgeois on the surface, is in fact teeming with villainy and obsession. When the criminal's obsession with money collides with Therese's obsession with divine justice, the screen practically combusts. (There is, as well, a scene in which fire is used to represent the mortal dangers of both carelessness and passion.)

Juliette Greco, young and gorgeous, has cheekbones that just don't stop. She vividly personifies the forces of God and nature that leave terrible destruction in their wake. A terrific powerhouse of a movie.

Enjoyably melded here are two staples of 1940s cinema, the melodrama and the noir.

Not particularly complex, the characters are either good or evil. Max (Philippe Lemaire) and all the people he mixes with, even the unfortunate rich Irène (Yvonne Sanson) who he robs and murders, are bad. While the Voise family of big sister Thérèse (Juliette Gréco), little sister Denise (Irène Galter), and the grandparents are all virtuous.

Noir elements include dream logic, fateful encounters, a high sexual charge, dramatic irony, mixed motives, violence and death. Low life individuals hustle each other in the underworld of Cannes, shot in expressionist photography full of symbolism to evocative music.

There is even an inverted femme fatale in Thérèse. Though leaving her convent on the sudden death of her parents to take over the family shop and look after Denise, she is still a nun at heart. Max, forcibly engaged to Denise after raping her, sees the fierce black-clad Thérèse as a much greater prize. She, all woman despite her outward ferocity, cannot help being susceptible to his immense charm (the two actors were lovers in real life) but sublimates her feelings into a desire to save his lost soul. In a highly emblematic scene, when Max is burning some shop rubbish in the courtyard at night, her clothes catch fire and he smothers the flames by rolling her on the ground, baring her midriff. That, however, is as close as he ever gets to rolling her around with even less on.

A powerful story, full of atmosphere, told with twists and tension and well worth the 100 minutes to watch.