Bob Le Flambeur (1956 Jean-Pierre Melville)

You couldn't stop me smiling throughout Bob le Flambeur. It begins with that 5AM city feeling I like and we're plunged into the 1950s Montmartre atmosphere in which Roger Duchesne's Bob inhabits. (A pre-war star with a shady war-time record.) When asked if he's following the game with a visit to the restaurant, he says he's going home to sleep, but when his flic mate picks him up, he says he's going to the restaurant. Like Casablanca's Rick he's a man of dubious past, but integrity. It's a film noir with deadpan attitude and a beautiful ending, and there's even the casino at Deauville to admire.

Henri Decae also shot Le Samourai and Les 400 Coups and the location feel and American attitude no doubt influenced the New Wave.

Straw Dogs (1972 Sam Peckinpah)

In Peckinpah’s Cornish western, there’s a suggestion the co-writer/director may not be taking things too seriously. During the course of the Siege of Trencher’s Farm, the odious rat catcher (Jim Norton) is seen riding a kid’s tricycle. One of his fellow thugs chases him with it, threatening to wrap it round his neck. The next shot shows them racing each other, both on tricycles, amidst the mayhem. I can’t think of any other slapstick moments in Peckinpah’s other violent set pieces. And later, Hoffman despatches the rat catcher with what looks suspiciously like a golf swing. Perhaps it would have been more fitting to the latter’s profession if he’d been the one to succumb to the trap.

With neat irony, Hoffman’s maths professor has picked the wrong fight in protecting David Warner, who has just (albeit accidentally) killed village strumpet Sally Thomsett (who I suspect of killing the cat). At the moment when he fears his wife Susan George will switch sides to old beau Charlie (Del Henney), he specifically becomes his rival, striking her, then pulling her by the hair, both of which Charlie has inflicted on her prior to the bizarre rape turned love scene turned gang rape. So whilst there’s audience pleasure in seeing the bad guys wiped out, are we also to acknowledge this as an anti-violence statement?

One thing’s for sure: this mismatched couple isn’t going to make it.

Along with those mentioned above, Ken Hutchison is also impressive as the ‘bad’ rapist, in a uniformly excellent cast.

Interesting to see the name of Tony Lawson as one of the editors. There’s occasional time jump editing in this that figures strongly in his work for Nic Roeg (from Bad Timing onwards), and also in Peckinpah’s later Cross of Iron, which along with Barry Lyndon Lawson also edited. And, I don’t know if it’s just me, but I love John Coquillon’s grey skies!

117m 16 secs submitted to BBFC = 113 m Video

Hiroshima, Mon Amour (1959 Alain Resnais)

I should have seen it by now, really. Of course I can clearly see where Marienbad came from - it's in the opening horrific montage where she says she remembers and he says she does not. That weird first shot: the bodies seem covered in sand (it's ash), then water. The editing that then was so different (though the Cahiers crowd link it to Eisenstein); the many shots of her running to meet her lover; the current lover jump cut to the dead German; a low shot of a house for no reason (yet). Tracking shots through Hiroshima: fascinating to see it then at all. That strange feeling of a city very late at night. The light reflecting off the water (Sacha Vierny). The modernity (they are both married). Memory, forgetting. Forgetting love, forgetting Hiroshima. The first days of love. I think I was expecting something explosive. It is a very big film.

To Rohmer, Resnais is a 'cubist'. Interesting, as Guernica is one of his early shorts.