HOW THE FRENCH OLD SCHOOL MADE ALL THE GANGSTERS WANT TO GO, “HON HON HON.”

By Simon Abrams

It’s been apparent since the earliest film noirs that nobody could produce suave delinquents like the French. The image of the wise-but-not-old gangster passing on his street smarts to the next generation of hoods in Jean-Pierre Melville’s Bob le Flambeur (1955) or Julien Duvier’s Pépé le Moko (1937) could just as easily describe the French noir’s relationship to American pulp flicks. While Scorsese and Coppola would lead the latter to the forefront of the genre, the charismatic style of auteurs like Jacques Becker, Henri-Georges Clouzot, Alain Corneau, Jules Dassin and Jean-Pierre Melville showed them how to get there. Read more