Ställd mot väggen

The America-obsessed but somehow ineffably French, Jean-Pierre Melville delivers another noiresque gangster film.

This exciting but doomy thriller was made in 1963. Starring Jean-Paul Belmondo, it's knee-deep in shadows, intrigue and suspicion and characters with perfectly tilted hats but shifty morals...

The film is made of elements Melville said he came to love in the B&W American crime movies of the 1930s: shadows, night, trench coats, guns, tough guys, cigarettes, slinky dames, cocktail bars, crooked cops, betrayal...

...narrative confusion between good and bad is seductively expressed in its miasmatic atmosphere.

...Melville is a mythmaker. His characters are archetypes of the cinema, specifically American cinema, though his outlook is unmistakably French, tinged with romanticism.