6.8 | / 10 |
Users | 4.5 | |
Reviewer | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
Nighttime New York in 1958 comes to moody, jazz-soaked life in this rarely seen noir from the great Jean-Pierre Melville, who cast himself as a journalist on an ethically fraught mission to track down a missing French diplomat.
Starring: Pierre Grasset, Christiane Eudes, Jean-Pierre MelvilleDrama | 100% |
Film-Noir | 24% |
Crime | 6% |
Thriller | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
French: LPCM Mono
English
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A, B (C untested)
Movie | 4.0 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 2.5 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
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.
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'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.
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.
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