Two Men in Manhattan

Jean-Pierre Melville was enamored with American films and culture, and in 1959 he made a film set in America, Two Men in Manhattan. The exteriors were shot in New York City, though the rest of the film was shot on set in France. It's a beautiful film, and a kind of trip through the New York City of the mind.

Melville plays a reporter based in New York. The French delegate to the U.N. didn't show up for a vote and is missing. Melville's editor assigns him the story, and Melville turns to his alcoholic photographer buddy, Pierre Grasset, to help him out.

The two take a somewhat tawdry odyssey through New York in one night. Gasset has pictures of the delegate with various women who might be his mistress. They start with an actress in a Broadway play (she's at the Mercury Theater, certainly an homage to Orson Welles). They go to Capitol Records, where a woman is recording a jazz album (the score is a very rambunctious jazz).

They are then led to a fancy brothel, and talk to almost impossibly blonde and husky-voiced madame. Here is where the film takes one of its occasional trips into a fantasy world. Finally they call on a burlesque dancer, bitter and sarcastic.

While they are at a diner (an exact replica of the diner in Melville's favorite American film, The Asphalt Jungle) they hear some news that ends up leading them to the delegate. Grasset takes some compromising pictures, and the last third of the film pits the journalistic integrity of Melville versus the greed of Gasset, who could sell the pictures for big money.

Two Men in Manhattan is a terrific little noir film, and gives the audience an argument--who is the protagonist? While the plot is seemingly simple--two men looking for another man--they are distinctly different. It might seem easy to tell who is the protagonist and who is the antagonist, Melville muddies the waters with a final shot that is brilliant the way it flips the entire movie.

Melville's performance, while not exactly technically good, works because he is the perfect newsman, with his basset hound eyes and fastidiousness (our first glimpse of him shows him carefully covering his typewriter with a plastic cover). Grasset is perfectly louche, and the film is a showcase of beautiful women of all stripes.

While not Melville's best, it's fascinating and entertaining, and has some really good shots of the city at night.