Le Samouraï, directed by Jean-Pierre Melville, screenplay by Jean-Pierre Melville and Georges P

Le Samouraï, directed by Jean-Pierre Melville, screenplay by Jean-Pierre Melville and Georges Pellegrin, cinematography by Henri Decaë, music by François de Roubaix, and edit by Monique Bonnot and Yolande Maurette.

As Melville himself put it, “You must be madly in love with cinema to create films. You also need a huge cinematic baggage.” Your awareness of film history, of the technical aspects of filmmaking, of film language, and of your cinematic style are vital to great filmmaking. Determination is another quality that emerges from that mad love for cinema. After serving in World War II, Melville applied to join the union in the French film industry and was rejected. Determined, he opened his own studio and began writing and directing his films. Later, he lost his studio to a fire, only to successfully come out of such a devastation through the need to continue making films. Obstacles always surface for the filmmaker, however, it is how one faces those obstacles that counts. (excerpt from: Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Samouraï: “I never lose. Not really.”)