Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		4.0

Two Men in Manhattan Blu-ray Movie Review

It's a helluva town.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman September 8, 2013

Jean-Pierre Melville holds an important if perhaps underappreciated place in the annals of French cinema, acting as a transitional figure bridging the generation of artists like Jean Renoir or Jean Cocteau and the New Wave era as personified by Jean-Luc Godard. Melville’s best known film in the West is probably his iconic 1967 effort Le Samourai, which has yet to be released domestically on Blu-ray. Le Samourai has created a rather large wake of films highly influenced by its minimalist take on a hitman, films as diverse as The Driver as well as the tangentially related Drive, Léon: The Professional, The Killer and Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai. While Melville is lionized by many in the New Wave generation (Godard used Melville in a bit in Breathless), his reputation stateside is curiously confined mostly to cineastes with a particular Francophile bent. While many of Melville’s films don’t quite rise to the level of Le Samourai, virtually all of them hold some fascination, and that’s certainly true of Two Men in Manhattan, a 1959 opus that saw Melville setting foot in the United States for the first time and embarking on a mad dash through New York City to capture as much local color as possible. The film frankly is probably most notable more for its ambience than for its actual plot, but it also offers Melville in his only starring role and it features some wonderfully noir-ish elements that will probably recommend it even to those who don’t have a particular interest in Melville or this era of French film.

Those of us who grew up with parents or grandparents who were part of the so-called Greatest Generation know that for many of our elders who went overseas to fight in World War II, talking about their experiences could be a difficult task, though there was never any question that they had partaken in a “good fight”, a battle waged for a noble cause and without the slightest moral ambiguity. One has to wonder if that same feeling was part and parcel of continental men and women of this same generation, especially when they had to navigate treacherous emotional territory as a result of their home country having been occupied by the Germans. Jean-Pierre Melville was actually born Jean-Pierre Grumbach, a Jewish boy who grew up to join the French Resistance during World War II, taking the surname of his favorite American author in the process and perhaps alluding to what then seemed like the impossible quest of reigning in a rampant, out of control beast. But as the fascinating “dialogue” between Jonathan Rosenbaum and Ignatiy Vishnevetsky included as a supplementary feature on this Blu- ray mentions, Melville seemed oddly ambivalent about his Resistance days. Perhaps something about the subterfuge, the out and out prevarication that these efforts necessitated, while obviously for a good cause, created some psychological tension in Melville from which he could never fully recover.

The film opens with what the two critics on the supplemental feature mention is one of the few—if not the only— outright references to Melville’s Jewish heritage, as three kids of different ethnicities (including a Jew) play in what is supposed to be the shadow of the United Nations building. Melville then actually goes on to utilize some stock footage of the U.N., perhaps alluding to the grand vision of a harmonious world which flourished all too briefly in the days after World War II, but which had by 1959 devolved into a mere parody of itself, something which of course some would argue has continued on to the present day. The plot of Two Men in Manhattan, which is admittedly fairly paper thin, involves the disappearance of a French U.N. diplomat (and erstwhile member of the French Resistance). Hot on the trail of this baffling story are a journalist named Moreau (Melville) and a boozy photographer named Delmas (Pierre Grasset).

The mystery of the missing delegate would seem to be the fulcrum upon which the plot hinges, and while it is in a way, what the film actually turns out to be about is more a clash of cultures, both with regard to the two French investigators and a rather unlikely gaggle of New Yorkers whom they meet over the course of one night, but perhaps even more importantly between the French guys themselves. Once the mystery of the missing man is solved, the film actually turns to what is its central idea: what to do with this knowledge? It’s a rather prescient quandary for those of who us live in a world dominated by tabloid scandal and a certain element of the press which exists solely to exploit the peccadilloes of the rich and famous and those in power.

While Two Men in Manhattan probably doesn’t rise to the top of Melville’s output, it offers many elements which came to define the director, including an almost palpable feeling of place, not necessarily limited only to the brisk location photography in and around Manhattan. Melville was a huge fan of glossy American films and modeled some of the sets in Manhattan after those he had seen in big American studio productions from earlier years. Sting had a hit many years ago called “An Englishman in New York”, and Two Men in Manhattan might be thought of as Melville’s French version of that same general idea of an outsider peering into a society which fascinates him, but which is somehow tantalizingly elusive at the same time. The film is a really interesting example of what might be called Nouvelle Noir or Noir Wave, offering techniques that bridge the darker mysteries of an era that was nearing its end with the freer, more stream of consciousness approach that would soon come to define French cinema.

Two Men in Manhattan Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Two Men in Manhattan is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Cohen Film Collection with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.33:1. Cohen has been presenting this restored version of Melville's film in limited theatrical exhibitions, including several film festivals. The elements are in remarkably good condition, with very little outright damage to report. There's a somewhat bifurcated look to this film, one which is clearly delineated between the location New York sequences— which were often filmed on the fly, and look like it—and the more tightly controlled studio sequences, which were apparently done in France. The New York segments suffer from occasionally inconsistent contrast and often extremely low light conditions which even this high definition presentation can't completely ameliorate. The studio sections look excellent crisp and well defined, with deep blacks and a generally very nicely modulated gray scale. Grain is somewhat variable between the two locations, but looks quite natural. Melville tends not to utilize many extreme close-ups, working instead with midrange shots that often feature two characters in the frame simultaneously, or alternatively one character shot from a certain distance, and so fine detail is perhaps not as immediately apparent as it might otherwise be. But there are several great textures on view here, including the tweed jackets of Delmas and the sheer silk dress of one of the women the Frenchmen question.

Two Men in Manhattan Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Two Men in Manhattan's lossless LPCM Mono track (delivered via LPCM 2.0) sounds remarkably good, all things considered, with the great jazz cues Melville utilizes sounding lush and full bodied. It's a bit misleading to have our specs above list only French, for a lot of the film is actually in English, but it does seem that at least some of the film may have been post-looped, as there are very slight but noticeable differences in the fidelity and ambience of some of the dialogue. That said, there's no real overt damage here to report and everything is clear and well prioritized. Dynamic range is also rather wide, given the nice music and some of the urban environmental noises.

Two Men in Manhattan Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Keeping Up Appearances: A Conversation Between Critics Jonathan Rosenbaum and Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, 2013 (1080p; 35:48). This unusually insightful piece is another indication that Cohen is making a play to become "Criterion, Jr.", offering some really interesting dialogue between these two. Rosenbaum has the most to say here, with Vishnevetsky acting more as a host, but this is really fascinating stuff, getting into Melville's past, his filmography, and elements about this film in particular.


• Original French Trailer (1080p; 3:47)


• Theatrical Re-Release Trailer (1080p; 1:35)

Two Men in Manhattan Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Jean-Pierre Melville is a curiously overlooked filmmaker, at least in America, where he never really seems to have gotten his full due. That hopefully will change, now that more of his films are becoming better known, and with at least some of them appearing on home video. Two Men in Manhattan is frankly probably not prime Melville, but it's still a "must see" for several reasons, including Melville's only starring performance and his great use of New York City location work. While the story here may be a bit too discursive and freewheeling for some, it actually has some salient points to make about media and responsibility, issues that are very much au courant. This Blu-ray offers generally excellent video and audio and the supplementary dialogue is quite illuminating. Highly recommended.