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Mubi's retrospective, The Crimes of Jean-Pierre Melville, is showing from February 2 - March 6, 2018 in the United States.Jean-Pierre Melville (née Grumbach) took his nom de guerre from the American writer Herman Melville during his time fighting in the Resistance. The Moby-Dick scribe was popular in France, thanks in part to Jean Giono’s fawning translation of that mammoth cetacean opus, though it was the psycho-sexual eccentricities of Pierre; or, the Ambiguities that inspired the name change. The filmmaker’s exacting minimalism bears few obvious aesthetic similarities to the writer’s voluble, serpentine prose, and he lacks Herman’s circuitous sense of dark humor, but they did share an affinity for the details of method, and (lonely souls both) for the lives of solitary men. Working usually within constructs of the mystery and thriller genres, the filmmaker obsessed over details, finding small, particular insights in the ephemera and trivialities of routine.

New Wave director Claude Chabrol goes off in an odd direction with this Francophone adaptation of Hamlet. Convinced that his father was murdered, the heir to an estate behaves like a madman as he sets out to unmask the killers. The ‘castle’ is a country manse guarded by thugs as a precaution against the signeur’s striking union workers. Special added attraction: the stars to see are Alida Valli and Juliette Mayniel of Eyes without a Face.

Ophélia

Blu-ray

Olive Films

1963 / B&W / 1:66 widescreen / 104 min. / Street Date April 25, 2017 / available through the Olive Films website / 29.95

Starring: Alida Valli, Juliette Mayniel, Claude Cerval, André Jocelyn, Robert Burnier, Jean-Louis Maury, Sacha Briquet, Liliane Dreyfus (David), Pierre Vernier.

Cinematography: Jacques Rabier, Jean Rabier

Film Editor: Jacques Gaillard

Original Music: Pierre Jansen

Written by Claude Chabrol, Paul Gégauff, Martial Matthieu from a play by William Shakespeare

Produced and Directed by Claude Chabrol

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