you need it, in the pocket of the coat. Finally, before you leave home, put your hat on. If you don't have a hat, you can't go. Melville's independence and "reporting" style of film-making (he was one of the first French directors to use real locations regularly) were a major influence on the French New Wave film movement. Jean-Luc Godard used him as a minor character in his seminal New Wave film Breathless. When Godard was having difficulty editing the film, Melville suggested that he just cut directly to the best parts of a shot. Godard was inspired and the film's innovative use of jump cuts have become part of its fame. In an interview, Melville claimed editing was his favorite part of the filmmaking process along with writing. Although a friend of left-wing icons such as Yves Montand and thought of himself as a communist in the 30's, Melville referred to himself as "an extreme individualist" and "a right-wing anarchist" in terms of politics. In 1963 he was invited as one of the jury at the 13th Berlin International Film Festival. Death Melville died on 2 August 1973 while dining with writer Philippe Labro at the Hôtel PLM Saint-Jacques restaurant in Paris; the cause of death has been variously given as a heart attack or a ruptured aneurysm. He was 55 years old. Melville was then writing his next film, Contre-enquête, a spy thriller for producer Jacques-Éric Strauss with Yves Montand in the lead. Melville apparently wrote the first 200 shots for the film. After Melville's death, Labro took over the project, hoping to finish writing and direct it, but he eventually dropped it to film Le hasard et la violence (1974), also starring Montand and for producer Strauss. Filmography As director & writer As actor Code Name Melville Produced in 2008, the 76-minute-long feature documentary Code Name Melville (original French title: Sous le nom de Melville) reveals the importance of Jean-Pierre Melville's personal experience in the French Resistance during World War II to his approach to filmmaking. References Footnotes Sources Eric Breitbart (2006). "Call Me Melville". New England Review 27:3. pp. 174–183 Montero, José Francisco, Jean-Pierre Melville. Crónicas de un samurái, Editorial Shangrila, Santander, 2014. Shangrilaediciones.com Bertrand Tessier. Jean-Pierre Melville: Le solitaire. Fayard, 2017. Further reading Ginette Vincendeau Jean-Pierre Melville: An American in Paris, 2003, BFI Publishing, Tim Palmer "An Amateur of Quality: Postwar Cinema and Jean-Pierre Melville's