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Jean-Pierre Melville, Two Men in Manhattan, 1959 (still); image: courtesy Cohen Film Collection
Film

Two Men in Manhattan

Thursday, July 27, 2017

6 p.m.

“The great Jean-Pierre Melville, a devotee of American cinema, made only one film in the U.S.: this moody 1958 noir that captures nighttime New York in indelible jazz–soaked black-and-white images. Ironically, it was never released here. Melville himself plays a journalist who teams up with a cynical, hard-drinking photographer to track down a missing French UN diplomat and former Resistance hero. A mysterious car trails their every turn.”
— Los Angeles Film Festival

“His mastery of mood, informed by his singular synthesis of Gallic existentialism and B-movie grit, invigorates every frame.”

— Sheri Linden, Los Angeles Times

“Melville seems less interested in the mystery than in his characters’ solitude: They have each in their own ways shut themselves off. The city itself seems to feed this alienation: Melville’s New York is a fragmented place where every neighborhood seems disconnected and everyone lives in their own cocoon, adhering to their own rules.”
— Bilge Ebiri, Village Voice



Film Details

Country: France
Language: French
Year: 1959
Running time: 84 min
Format: DCP
Director: Jean-Pierre Melville
Producers: Florence Melville, Alain Térouanne
Cinematographer: Nicolas Hayer
Editor: Monique Bonnot
Print Source: Cohen Film Collection


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