No Room for Squares: Jean-Pierre Melville, Jazz and the French Bachelor

Abstract

, The birth of the cool is a phrase that ordinarily evokes cutting-edge American phenomena like Miles Davis, Abstract Expressionism and the Beats,' Karen Durbin wrote recently in the New York Times, 'but in France, it could describe the casual stylish gangster movies of Jean-Pierre Melville. 'I Similar to the title of one of Hank Mobley's most famous albums, No Room for Squares, the Melvillean universe is a nocturnal one where the heroes are decidedly' cool' , usually on the wrong side of the law and therefore subversive, and, like the best oflate night jam sessions, always in movement. Similarly, there is a common thread that further connects the Melvillean protagonists, besides the trademark fedoras and trench coats (whichmakeupa sortof'uniform' for coolness in Melville's films): they are always bachelors and loners who invariably find themselves in a nightclub at a pivotal time when, of course,jazz serves as more than simple background music but as a metaphor for the 'lone wolf the Melvillean hero becomes. Just as the poet Jacques Reda compared Miles Davis to a nocturnal wanderer '[qui] continue a reflechir Ie meme soleil disparu, de rader dans un entre chien et loup interminable,'2 Melville's Bob Ie Flambeur, for example, revels in a sort of wistful freedom allowed for by his bachelorhood. Free from the structures and responsibilities of domestic life, he can come alive 'round midnight' while his married counterparts are safely tucked into their beds. As Melville explains regarding Bob: 'Bob est un homme libre. II a choisi de vivre a Montmartre parce que pour lui Montmartre est encore Ie seul endroit ou I' on puisse vivre. C' est Ie dernierrefuge. II y vit pendant la nuit jusqu' a I' aube, entre loup et chien, puisque Ie soir, c' est entre chien et loup. '3 Indeed in such films as Bob Ie Flambeur (1957) or Deux hommes dans Manhattan (1958), ludic and nocturnal spaces (such as casinos,jazz clubs and even the ubiquitous empty streets) fill the void Melville's protagonists feel during the day while also providing them with a counter-universe that they can hang on to as an alternative system of values. If during the day these bachelor heroes (or anti-heroes) flounder in a boring quotidian they reject, they reclaim the night hours as their own because it is at night that they can reassert their true personalities and feel free both spatially and spiritually.