Born in Paris in 1917 and died in 1973, Melville took his stage name from the author Herman Melville. He made stylish, spare crime films and Resistance dramas, and his cool, lonely heroes strongly influenced later gangster and action cinema.
Filmography
- Le Silence de la mer (1949)
- Les Enfants terribles (1950)
- Bob le flambeur (1956)
- Léon Morin, Priest (1961)
- Le Doulos (1962)
- Second Wind (1966)
- Le Samouraï (1967)
- Army of Shadows (1969)
- Le Cercle rouge (1970)
- Un flic (1972)