More History on JP Melville, aka. pseudonym of Jean-Pierre Grumbach

Herman Melville, pseudonym of Jean-Pierre Grumbach, served in the Free French forces during World War II, founded his own film production company in 1946, and built his own studio in 1949. Melville's early films, such as Le Silence de la mer (1947; “The Silence of the Sea”), were made on small budgets and used character actors instead of established stars. His other early films were Les Enfants terribles (1948; “The Little Terrors”), a brilliant screen adaptation of the novel by Jean Cocteau; Bob le flambeur (1955), his first gangster film; and Deux hommes à Manhattan (1958; “Two Men in Manhattan”). Melville's use of location shooting, natural lighting, and improvisational acting in these films strongly influenced such later directors as Claude Chabrol, François Truffaut, and Jean-Luc Godard. Edited from http://filmbay.com Encyclopedia. Janet Lambert.