Sous le nom de Melville (2008 TV Movie) was written and directed by Olivier Bohler. It was shown in the U.S. with the title Code Name Melville.
Criterion Collection describes it as, "A seventy-six minute documentary on Melville's time in the French Resistance and his films about it." Well, not exactly.
What we get is a disjointed movie with talking heads. Not much about the Resistance, and not much about the films about the Resistance.
If you are going to talk about a director's style, don't just talk. Show us some examples. Instead, we learn the name of Melville's cat. (Not kidding.)
We learn something about his character. We learn about his relationship with the directors of the French New Wave. We learn what directors from Germany and Hong Kong think about his work. However, we don't see any of it.
Any talking head film--including this one--will work well on the small screen. (In this case, this movie was made for TV.) Code Name Melville has a strong 7.6 IMDb rating. I didn't think that it was even close to that, and rated it 6.
Criterion Collection describes it as, "A seventy-six minute documentary on Melville's time in the French Resistance and his films about it." Well, not exactly.
What we get is a disjointed movie with talking heads. Not much about the Resistance, and not much about the films about the Resistance.
If you are going to talk about a director's style, don't just talk. Show us some examples. Instead, we learn the name of Melville's cat. (Not kidding.)
We learn something about his character. We learn about his relationship with the directors of the French New Wave. We learn what directors from Germany and Hong Kong think about his work. However, we don't see any of it.
Any talking head film--including this one--will work well on the small screen. (In this case, this movie was made for TV.) Code Name Melville has a strong 7.6 IMDb rating. I didn't think that it was even close to that, and rated it 6.
