Two Men in Manhattan

American women are very direct! Maté’s D.O.A. governs the filming, a captivating mix of grainy snapshots of subways and diners plus fastidious French interiors, the mental topography of Melville’s owlish deadpan. The mystery segues into a dilemma, the dead politician sprawled in his lover’s apartment was once a Resistance hero and is now paparazzi catnip.

Melville’s cool, taut black-and-white images exalt, with an outsider’s passion, the city’s lights, the architecture, the bustling streetscapes, and the romantic desolation, but, as the plot turns sordid, he balances the atmospheric sleaze with an ultra-French infusion of national honor… [Melville] turns a story of back-alley pleasures and lowball jackpots into a glorious myth about the making of a nation’s glorious myths.

There’s something quaint, modest, maybe even a little naïve about Two Men in Manhattan, lending it a unique feel among Melville’s later, probably greater, and certainly graver achievements. Two Men in Manhattan may have unknowingly brought the first phase of Melville’s career to a close, but it doesn’t represent reconciliation on the director’s part so much as transition, gilding his rough and tumble aesthetic with a social consciousness that would carry well through the coming decade.