La Cinémathèque & Melville

I signed up for a "Libre Pass" at the Cinématèque Française today after work. It is essentially a monthly pass, costing ten euro a month, that allows you to enter all screenings, exhibits, workshops, etc. freely. Seeing as I want to enter a Master's program in film next year, I figured I needed some intensive regular study.
The Cinémathèque was designed by Frank Gehry (Disney Music Hall in L.A.) and definitely carries his conspicuous fingerprint. It seems like the perfect building for France's main cinema library.
I immediately took advantage of the pass and went to see one of Jean-Pierre Melville's more unpolished films, L'aîné des Ferchaux (Magnet of Doom, 1963). The film stock itself had clearly taken some abuse over the years; the first few minutes suffered from severe cepia-damage and there was heavy scratching throughout. Nonetheless, the photography, the mise-en-scène, and guerilla-style documentary style that laces the course of the film, produces some stunning footage.
The film stars Jean-Paul Belmondo (Michel), as a failed amateur boxer, who desperately seeks employment from a brash, rich, and shady banker played by Charles Vanel (M. Ferchaux). The later ends up hiring Michel as a secretary, confidence man, and travel companion as M. Ferchaux flees from the law in France into the depths of the America's southern bayou. Though Melville's delivery was a bit clumsy and underdeveloped the film was extremely rich in ideas, experimentation, aesthetics, foreshadowing, and so forth. Unfortunately, the plot is stretched too thin and the film tends to drag a bit as soon as it picks itself up again. Add the rigid American non-actors, the choppy editing, and numerous plot impossibilities and the movie just falls short of a honed, chef d'oeuvre.
In spite of its faults, there's a lot to appreciate: Melville's sampling New Orleans nightlife with a camera shooting from the open car of a moving vehicle, the documentary style of his footage of empty highway stretches, slick diners, smoky bars and neon motel signs, small parts of a puzzle that in clicking together form a different kind of Americana. One seen through the eyes of a European not necessarily fascinated with what he sees. If the boxer's fixation on Frank Sinatra, the son of Italian immigrants much like himself, symbolizes the magic quality of the New World, a motley assortment of thieving hitchhikers, soldiers spouting racial slurs and opportunist, murderous bar owners reveals the seedy underbelly of the American Dream. Furthermore, lovers of the director will note the plot's minimalism, the sparse, intimate dialogues as typical Melvillesque themes in-vitro.
I'm not about to say the film is under-rated, but I thoroughly enjoyed seeing it on the big screen.