Episode 737: Two Men in Manhattan (1959)

The Projection Booth Podcast

The Projection Booth

Film Reviews, Film Interviews, Film History, Tv & Film

4.8 • 686 Ratings

🗓️ 9 April 2025

⏱️ 79 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Film historian Samm Deighan and cult cinema expert Andrew Leavold join Mike to shine a light on Jean-Pierre Melville’s Two Men in Manhattan (1959). Often overshadowed by his better-known crime films, this moody noir follows a journalist and a photographer as they comb the streets of New York in search of a missing French diplomat. The trio digs into Melville’s fascination with American style, the film’s ethically murky characters, and how it fits within the director’s larger body of work. They also explore the tension between documentary realism and stylized noir, and why Two Men in Manhattan deserves a second look.

Author Ginette Vincendeau (Jean-Pierre Melville: An American in Paris), discusses this unique entry in Melville's filmography.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hold your ears, folks.
0:06.8	It's showtime.
0:08.6	People pay good money to see this movie.
0:10.9	When they go out to a theater, they want cold sodas, hot popcorn, and no monsters in the projection booth.
0:17.3	Everyone pretend podcasting isn't boring.
0:20.1	Shut it off.
0:25.5	Turn it off.
0:27.6	Turn it off.
0:32.6	Hey. Two men, two French,
0:48.3	Two French.
0:53.3	In the immensity of a city of an unconue, in New York, the night.
0:58.0	You can't enter. Yes.
1:11.6	Two men who are
1:16.6	going to live at the most
1:17.6	strange of the inquest
1:18.6	the enquiries. These two men have to have to be
1:35.8	a lot of questions.
1:38.3	And there are new, I remember.
1:40.3	Even the night.
1:42.3	Especially the night.
1:43.3	Rien than the night. Surttou the night. Rient than the night.
1:45.0	What kind of mess?
	...

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