Le silence de la mer
Le silence de la mer
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1h 27m
Directed by Jean-Pierre Melville • 1949 • France
Starring Howard Vernon, Nicole Stéphane, Jean-Marie Robain
Jean-Pierre Melville began his superb feature filmmaking career with this powerful adaptation of an influential underground novel written during the Nazi occupation of France. A cultured, naively idealistic German officer is billeted in the home of a middle-aged man and his grown niece; their response to his presence—their only form of resistance—is complete silence. Constructed with elegant minimalism and shot, by the legendary Henri Decaë, with hushed eloquence, LE SILENCE DE LA MER points the way toward Melville’s later films about resistance and the occupation (LEON MORIN, PRIEST; ARMY OF SHADOWS) yet remains a singularly eerie masterwork in its own right.
Up Next in Le silence de la mer
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Code Name Melville
This 2008 documentary by Olivier Bohler delves into the World War II experiences of Jean-Pierre Grumbach—who would take the nom de guerre Jean-Pierre Melville—and how they affected his later filmmaking career.
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Melville Steps Out of the Shadows
This 2010 documentary by Pierre-Henri Gibert chronicles the making of LE SILENCE DE LA MER and features interviews with actor Nicole Stéphane, filmmaker Volker Schlöndorff, cinematographer Pierre Lhomme, and Rui Nogueira, author of “Melville on Melville.”
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Ginette Vincendeau on LE SILENCE DE L...
In this interview, conducted in November 2014, film professor Ginette Vincendeau, author of “Jean-Pierre Melville: An American in Paris,” discusses Melville’s remarkable film debut.
