☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
Le Silence de la Mer (1947) -- J.-P. Melville
Melville's first film
is very good indeed. Drawn from a
popular short story circulated by the French Resistance during WWII, it depicts
a German officer taking forced lodging with an elderly French man and his
niece. The German is full of romantic
notions of a merger of French poetry and literature with German classical
music, a marriage of two cultures, and although the man and his niece refuse to
speak to him or even acknowledge his presence, he delivers them nightly
monologues that make him a sympathetic character. Unfortunately, the reality of the Nazis' aims
is eventually made clear and the German is seriously disillusioned. Melville's attention to small details (and
sounds) is already apparent and he decorates the film with expressionistic
touches (point of view shots, close-ups of eyes, distant views of Chartres,
etc).
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