Since the release of Sight & Sound magazine’s 2022 Top 100 Greatest Films of All Time critics poll, some of us agreed, others were appalled; in particular with the absence of masterworks by Luis Buñuel, Ernst Lubitsch and Howard Hawks. But the positive is that it opens pathways for lists by other cineastes which keeps the importance of cinema on the front burner. …

French filmmaker Jean-Pierre Melville (1917-73) is hard to pigeonhole. He operated outside established channels (eventually running his own studio) yet he employed movie stars. An inspiration to the New Wavers who liberated French cinema, he remained a consciously classical technician. Abroad he’s best remembered for a trilogy of gangster dramas — Le doulos (1962), Le deuxième souffle (1966) and Le samouraï (1967).