Un flic [A Cop aka Dirty Money] (1972)

(On Cable TV, December 2022) While Un flic seldom gets the attention that writer-director Jean-Pierre Melville’s earlier films do, it’s still a very effective thriller that came at the cusp of the neo-noir movement. It also sports a rather amazing cast, what with Alain Delon as a cop facing down Richard Crenna as the criminal, with Catherine Deneuve as the woman between them. The secret ingredient of the film is its atmosphere, at least initially—much of the first act takes place in a southern French seaside town, now deserted during the off-season. The lack of human presence in places clearly designed for crowds further adds to the desolate, almost post-apocalyptic nature of the film. Melville further underscores that point by turning in a film painted in bleak cool colours, scarcely letting joy into the frame as he follows a policeman burnt out on humanity. Un flic is not that good—there’s a repetition of plot and theme that makes the result far less memorable than it should be—but it does remain interesting, especially if you position it in the history of film noir: Melville was one of those who took the American genre and reframed it for a French audience, and now he was clearly going in the direction that neo-noir was taking by the turn of the 1970s. If you’re not that well-versed in Melville’s filmography and the genre he preferred, great—Un flic still works as a standalone. But, as with many movies, it does work better in context.