L’aîné des Ferchaux is a seldom-seen Melville film, definitively enclosed by the deep shadows of Le Doulos (that preceded it) or Le Deuxième souffle (that followed), not to mention Le Samouraï or Le Cercle rouge. True enough, it doesn’t fit the category of the gangster film, as it doesn’t fit the improvised ironies of Bob le flambeur or Melville’s earlier ‘American trip’, Two Men in Manhattan. And that is of course all due to Georges Simenon, meaning that once again it is a film about escape and investigation that goes to the depths of identities, a search for something neither of the two men in the story knows.
Even within the Simenon category L’aîné des Ferchaux is pretty much forgotten, but we estimate that is essentially situated among the finest, including films from Duvivier, Renoir, Decoin. In any case the film was born under strange signs, as Melville’s approach was not entirely kindly oriented, starting with a first draft that was pratically an original script. At the same tame he insisted on “being faithful to the spirit” of the novel. Be that as it may, it’s a “Simenon” devoured by a film-maker who filled the film with is personal agenda, above all his profound love relationship with “America”.
First and more innocently, there are the references, some timely like Piaf’s death, Kennedy and the Cuban crisis (November 1962), a Sinatra song from Capra’s last film, A Hole in the Head; some emotional associations, like the visit to the street where Sinatra was born (Belmondo’s gasp, “Frankie Boy…”, is as memorable as his “Bogey…” in Breathless) or citations from films of Robert Wise (boxing).
This is a road movie that catches the essentials with masterful, brightly-lit color and a Scope camera that is almost palpably there, and yet neither Charles Vanel nor Jean-Paul Belmondo ever set foot in the States (an amazing feat). It’s an America that seemed true enough (in spirit) to have been congratulated by the American Embassy for its authentcity, and inspired the comment that “the images of the very ‘Faulknerian’ South will stay in our memory long after the story has faded” (Henri Chapier).
Yet, the poignant part of the film relates to the story of an old man, Ferchaux, becoming emotionally attacched to a young man, Maudet (“Don’t forget that Maudet is a Melvillean hero”, the director himself pointed out): it’s a kaleidoscope about power, the father-son theme, money, jealousy, emotional gambling, a newly found penchant for homosexuality, and yet never anything as simple as that. Really, it’s a film about impossibile love, and as such perhaps Melville’s most tender, cruel and personal film. This is a strange film with a very Simenonian (or, as you like it, Melvillean) twist: something as poignant as a crime might be the absence of crime – something left undone.
One strange lead comes from Melville himself: the old man Ferchaux is a veiled portrait of Howard Hughes, thereby providing another angle on the cinematographic reflections of the strange man, perhaps his most essential portrait along with Robert Ryan’s character in Ophuls’s Caught. Hughes is one more contemporary reference, given that he disappeared from public life exactly when Melville’s film eas being made. His absence, with Ferchaux as his indirect reflection, adds an intriguing touch to Melville’s shadow play.

Peter von Bagh