“When You Read this Letter” – And you must [MOVIE REVIEW]
Irene Galter and Juliette Gréco in Jean-Pierre Melville’s WHEN YOU READ THIS LETTER (1953). Courtesy: Rialto Pictures/Gaumont “When You Read this Letter,” is one of only a couple of films that Jean-Pierre Melville directed but did not write. Working from a script by Jacques Deval, “When You Read this Letter” was the film Melville reluctantly agreed to direct to prove that he was capable of making a commercial movie. Up until this point, 1953, he was derisively labeled a dilettante; he was viewed as seeing film as a purely intellectual exercise. As such, he was virtually unemployable. This film, an international co-production, was disparaged by the New Wave directors and Melville himself as a sell-out to commercial interests. François Truffaut, an ardent early critic of the film, and Melville, himself, are dead wrong. Melville may never have come around, but Truffaut did because he was finally able to see what is readily on view – an independent film expressing an existential point of view, amazingly made with studio money—and, surprisingly, receiving its first commercial release in the US. Thérèse, a novice nun, has been informed that her parents have just died in a fiery car…
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