Un Flic (1972)

The Story

Melville’s last film is an ideal - if bracingly pessimistic - final testament. Opening with one of the greatest sequences of the director’s career, a brilliantly atmospheric and typically elemental seaside heist, it provides a distillation of Melville’s career and his characteristically obsessive preoccupations. A melancholic and metallic blue sheen imbues the film and its characters with a death-like pallor fully appropriate to this fatalistic tale. It focuses on the relentless pursuit of criminals and the close bond between the almost somnambulistic detective (Alain Delon) and the chief suspect (Richard Crenna). With Catherine Deneuve.

Synopsis by Adrian Danks.

Rating

PG

Cast

Alain Delon, Richard Crenna, Catherine Deneuve, Simone Valère

Director

Jean-Pierre Melville