(Jean-Pierre Melville, 1949; Eureka!, U)
A hero of the French New Wave for his independence from the mainstream French film industry, Jean-Pierre Melville (1917-73) is most celebrated for his cool gangster movies. But drawing on his experience with the resistance in France and the Free French army in London, he made three outstanding films about the occupation – Léon Morin, Priest (1961), Army of Shadows (1969), and his accomplished, low-budget debut, Le Silence de la mer, based on a novella by Vercors (nom de guerre of Jean Bruller), published in 1942 by the clandestine underground press, Les Editions de Minuit.
Silence centres on a cultivated Francophile German officer (Howard Vernon) billeted on an elderly Frenchman and his daughter in a village outside Paris, who defiantly remain mute in his presence. Meanwhile, the officer delivers idealistic monologues about a marriage between Germany and France that will bring about a new Europe, though he gradually realises how absurd such a belief is.
Eloquent in its speech, its silence and its carefully chosen images, this civilised, claustrophobic masterpiece is the first feature film by cinematographer Henri Decaë, later to work with Malle, Chabrol and Truffaut.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2012/feb/05/silence-de-mer-melville-dvd
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