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<\/p>\nSometimes, the most accurate mirrors we face are held up to us by others. <\/p>\n
Consider the flood of viral stories about America and those visiting it during the World Cup \u2014 the German who sang our praises and found himself coddled by locals who want to believe in a version of the country that has been lost, the Scottish fans who charmed and were charmed wherever they went, the Japanese fans who cleaned up stadiums after their team played, and the shameful tales of our treatment of Iranians and Africans and of many people Black or brown or from the Middle East. <\/p>\n
Classic films can also preserve such snapshots of the past, and one of the most intriguing is Jean-Pierre Melville\u2019s \u201cTwo Men in Manhattan,\u201d a fairly conventional missing-person-hunted by reporters tale that captures 1959 New York at its Cafe\/Cabaret Society-cool jazz peak. <\/p>\n
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The sunglasses-fetishizing Melville, \u201cGodfather of the French New Wave<\/a>,\u201d shot on location, with its lurid advertising-lit Manhattan-at-night scenes, and on French soundstage interiors and an almost all-French cast. <\/p>\n It\u2019s a movie of \u201cvibe\u201d and feel, very much in the \u201cnostalgic existentialist\u201d vein of Melville\u2019s most famous films (\u201cBob le Flambeur,\u201d \u201cLe Samurai\u201d<\/a>). \u201cTwo Men\u201d is also arch and sometimes messy, with imitative but illogical scenes in service of a generic plot, bits of looped sound and interiors and exteriors that don\u2019t match up as neatly as Hollywood productions of the day. <\/p>\n And every so often, there\u2019s a hint of what the man who took American novelist Herman Melville\u2019s name as his alter ego during his days in the WWII French resistance, thinks of this land he visited, took in and pondered, mostly through his viewing of American cinema, especially Hollywood film noir. <\/p>\n A French diplomat goes missing, and no one \u2014 journalist, photojournalist or the man\u2019s family \u2014 even considers going to the U.S. police. Journalistic \u201cethics\u201d and morals seem to be something the French mull over before ignoring, reminding us of that \u201cSweet Smell of Success\u201d <\/a>age when Americans rarely took such scruples into consideration. \u201cForeigners\u201d are both exotic and annoying, and a Black stripper is hated by her fellow white dancers. <\/p>\n Melville may take us to a high-end brothel, with geishas and sex workers of many races. <\/p>\n \u201cYou can judge a culture by its level of prostitution,\u201d a cynical Frenchman notes. <\/p>\n But the dancer Bessie Reed (Mich\u00e8le Bailly) is the only character writer-director-star Melville chose to film nude. <\/p>\n All of that is subtext. What Melville was going for here was a cool jazz collision of generations and values. An old school U.N. diplomat of \u201cthe classy type,\u201d one with a war record, has gone missing. <\/p>\n The 40ish news agency reporter Moreau (Melville) has to be reminded \u201cof that old French expression\u201d that always pertains to \u201cwhenever a man is missing\u201d bythe diplomat\u2019s lesbian secretary (Colette Fleury).<\/p>\n \u201cCherchez la femmes.\u201d Look for the women. <\/p>\n The posing, lying, bribing and finagling Moreau drags his even less ethical younger freelance photographer\/hustler Delmas (Pierre Grasset) out of bed with his latest conquest, sobers him up and off they go into the night. <\/p>\n An actress (Ginger Hall), a singer (Glenda Leigh) and a dancer (Bailly) are the reporting duo\u2019s married and missing quarry\u2019s known paramours. Bars and brothels and a Broadway show backstage will be visited, a flask will be emptied and every time they get in Delmas\u2019 Ford Mainline, a Ford Fairlane cranks up and follows them all through the night.<\/p>\n We can sense that the real \u201ctest\u201d of this reporter\/photographer collaboration won\u2019t come amid the lies they tell to ambush these women, but when they get closer to \u201cthe truth\u201d of what\u2019s happened and how that will play back home in France.<\/p>\n When I refer to \u201cTwo Men in Manhattan\u201d as \u201cmessy,\u201d I\u2019m talking about things like the seemingly pointless \u201cinterrogations\u201d of the three women. Yes, the characters are \u201cintroduced.\u201d But Moreau questions them (in English, with much of the dialogue between French men and women in subtitled French), gets less than nothing from them \u2014 no admissions or denials, barely a hint of \u201cconnection\u201d between them and the diplomat \u2014 and are summarily dismissed. <\/p>\n Moreau and Delmas are pretty much frisked and made to \u201ccheck your coats\u201d at the strip club, when we see other patrons in trench coats. <\/p>\n Some of the performances seem phonetically sounded-out in English, and other bit players can come off as amateurish, something a director more comfortable with English would have caught. <\/p>\n The resolution to the evening\u2019s mystery is conventional. It\u2019s the wildly divergent responses to it from our man-hunting duo and the reporter\u2019s Old School boss (Jean Darconte) that interests Melville and grips the viewer 65 years later. <\/p>\n Cinematographer Nicolas Hayer shoots Manhattan street scenes at night in ways no Hollywood movie of the era did \u2014 using the avaiable light from neon signs, marquees and street lamps and little else. It\u2019s dark beyond the neon, not washed out with fill light. \u201cTwo Men in Manhattan\u201d is even more striking to look at than the \u201cjournalism\u201d noir classic \u201cSweet Smell of Success.\u201d<\/p>\n And composers Christian Chevallier and Martial Solal give us jazz on the soundtrack, on record players, small combos in clubs and in a Capital Records recording studio, much of seemingly inspired by the brassy, brazen jazz standard \u201cBlues in the Night.\u201d <\/a><\/p>\n Whatever its shortcomings, \u201cTwo Men in Manhattan\u201d maintains a vibe and a tone that its creator, a French \u201cinnocent\u201d abroad in America, never allows to stray. It\u2019s a bracing slice of \u201cas others see us\u201d cinema from an era many Americans look back on as \u201cthe good ol\u2019days.\u201d <\/p>\n Melville makes the case that in cinematic terms, at least, the \u201950s were a gilded, if monochromatic era. He shows our cultural capital painted in shadowy shades of black and white and a time when our myths were defended and our music was jazz. He shows us the way the world saw us even if we were too distracted by rock\u2019n roll, Technicolor and Cinemascope big screen spectacles and the new TV set in every living room to remember it right. <\/p>\n
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