When You Read This Letter was made by Melville early in his career so that he could prove his ability to make a commercially successful film (producers thought he was too intelligent to do this!) and he succeeded, allowing him to follow with his more personal and individual films. Quand... is atypical of Melville's films in some ways, especially its strong female characters, who gradually disappear in his later films. It was made on location in Cannes and has some of the most beautiful black-and-white images ever shot (by cinematographer Henri Alekan, who shot Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast in 1946). This is not a glamorous Cannes but one where everyone is struggling to make a living; Phillipe Lemaire is a gas station attendant, boxer and gigolo; Yvonne Sanson is a wealthy older woman who drives a huge Cadillac convertible; Irene Galter works in her parents' stationery store and Juliette Greco, Irene Galter's sister, leaves a convent to take over the store when their parents die.
Lemaire has to have sex with whatever woman is in the room with him. He rapes Galter, who unsuccessfully attempts suicide. and Lemaire is told by Greco he has to marry Irene or Greco will shoot him. He ostensibly goes along with this idea (this is in many ways a very Roman Catholic screenplay, by playwright Jacques Deval) but tells Greco he really loves her. Greco's response is somewhat impassive and Lemaire says he will wait for her at a train station, where he is hit and killed by the train Greco is on, perhaps going to meet Lemaire and perhaps going back to the convent, which she eventually does.
The film is a fascinating mixture of melodrama and film noir, genres Melville loved, just as the looming Cadillac convertible demonstrated Melville's fondness for American cars. Certainly many elements of Melville's later films are here -- from the trench coats to the guns -- but this is also a film with females as heroes and victims, not just as femme fatales.
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