Omar Sharif, Peter O'Toole, Alain Delon and Hussein Fahmy, then president of the Cairo Film Festival, at the opening ceremony of the 23rd Cairo International Film Festival in 1999
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.”)
![Alain Delon on the set of Les Félins [1964]](https://64.media.tumblr.com/31718cfa248ba1e0da46bc78819a3e37/tumblr_mple92mKKQ1qcs4zto1_1280.jpg "Alain Delon on the set of Les Félins [1964]")
