Un Flic

Like Bresson, Melville made a short, then 13 features, of which this superb policier was the last. Like Bresson's, these films were steadily pared down, becoming melancholy yet more rigorous. Witness Delon as the killer in Le Samourai or here as the flic, desperate - and unsuccessful - in pursuit of drug smugglers.

Through luck in solving a bank robbery and getting involved with a woman (Deneuve) who turns out to be the mistress of the gang leader, matters progress. Although ill, Melville still managed a dark edge and a sense of camaraderie among villains and cops in his last take on his preferred genre, the American thriller.