For those trying to decipher Melville’s intentions and impetuses, this may or may not be helpful (from
Melville on Melville)
I think I am the last living witness in France who can testify on behalf of that pre-war American cinema. One day I shall no longer be around, and there will be no one left in France with a memory like mine who can really assess these films as they deserve. Because if you see them now at the Cinematheque, you can’t place them in the context of the year in which they were made. The film which was released in April 1934 - between March 1934 and May 1934 - isn’t at all the same thing when you see it now some afternoon or evening at the Cinematheque. So: are my films - and I’m not putting on a false modesty act here - worth talking about in the same terms as some of these other films I’m always talking about? I don’t know the answer, and nobody will until some fifty years from now when the Henri Langlois Pantheon has been replaced by a definitive Pantheon . . . because I don’t
accept the Langlois Pantheon, which is subjective, distorted,
and to be approached with caution. What I do accept, of
course, is Langlois’ mission, his life-work, and the Cinematheque,
that marvellous invention he shares with Franju. But the films Langlois loves - there I can’t agree with him.
And of course there’s also this
My uncle was a big Paris antique-dealer, at a time when that was a real profession. I was a very small boy when he made me understand one day the difference between things that are beautiful and things that are less so. I was asking him why the enormous difference in price between two objects in his shop, and he took two apparently identical Louis XIV armchairs and said: ‘You see, here are two more or less similar armchairs. Yet one is worth more than the other. Look at them carefully so you make no mistake, then tell me which is the more beautiful and therefore the more expensive.’ I looked at them carefully, I thought hard, and I made no mistake. Pleased, my uncle then added, ‘From now on, throughout your life, you will always know the difference between what is beautiful and what is not.’ I have never forgotten that lesson. So I believe I have very sound taste. For instance, at this moment we are watching Written on the Wind on television. It’s a pleasant film, very well made, but it’s not a great film although Douglas Sirk did make one remarkable film, A Time to Love and a Time to Die. The actress in it, on the other hand - Dorothy Malone - is a very fine piece of Louis XIV furniture. I think we are agreed about that, but if by any chance you were to disagree with me, well, it is I who would be right.
As you can tell, this book rules
