Un Flic

Aug 16 - Aug 18, 2013

(Jean-Pierre Melville, France, 1972, 35mm, 98 min)

New 35mm print!

A swan song from the great Jean-Pierre Melville (mostly famous for his noir gangster films), who was dubbed by Godard the ‘godfather’ of the New Wave, for the stylish existential nature expressed in all his films. Melville’s aura of cool is generally derived from extended sequences of silent action where the audience has to find out what’s going on as the characters perform their tasks.  It’s also derived from a collision of noir and modern style – worn fedoras, trenchcoats and faces; a generally muted color scheme; and slow pacing that emphasizes process.

Alain Delon plays a Paris cop embroiled in a strange romantic triangle with cinema’s quintessential tough guy Richard Crenna and Catherine Deneuve at her most fabulously glacial. There are daring robberies in a seafront bank and on a train, a wonderful stake-out in a cafe, great early '70s fashions and decor and lots and lots of "mecs" with obligatory Melville accessories of raincoats and guns. Plus a hilarious last deadpan scene involving a piece of chewing-gum. Un Flic delivers the best of cops, robbers and fog.

 

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