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DVDfever.co.uk – Press release: The Jean-Pierre Melville Collection on DVD
Optimum Home Entertainment
Posted: February 6th, 2009.
OUT TO OWN ON DVD 2 MARCH 2009
Jean-Pierre Melville (1917 1974) is one of the most revered French film directors of all time. Born in Paris, his first movies were shot on 16mm with a camera given to him by his father. Conscripted in to military service just before the outbreak of the Second World War, Melville then escaped Nazi-occupied France and became a member of the French Resistance. Throughout his career as a film director he constantly drew on this experience, creating underworlds of secrecy and deception. The reluctant godfather of the French New Wave, Melvilles highly individual style was influenced by the ideas of existentialism and surrealism, but arguably his greatest debt was to the American film noirs of 1930s and 40s Hollywood, the traditions of which he wove with inimitable style into his quintessentially French films, seeing him hailed by many as the father of the French gangster movie.
This set contains six of his finest films, including amongst others his early bittersweet masterpiece, Bob Le Flambeur, the soon-to-be-remade Un Cercle Rouge, and his final film, the underrated Un Flic.
The complete list: Army of Shadows, Le Doulos, Leon Morin Pretre, Le Cercle Rouge, Bob Le Flambeur and Un Flic.
The DVD is out on March 2nd, it runs for 696 mins and retails for £44.99 on DVD,but is currently on Amazon at the link above for £32.99.
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Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.