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Thomas Jane’s iconic detective roles are built out of his love for this French noir filmmaker
As it turns out, Thomas Jane has a killer DVD collection featuring films by Jean-Pierre Melville
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When you see Thomas Jane onscreen, chances are he's investigating something or someone. That also includes his time as The Punisher from Marvel Comics. But what are the forces that have influenced his oeuvre as an actor? As it turns out, Thomas Jane has a killer DVD collection, with a lot of love for one French director in particular.
Speaking to our video producer Ashley Victoria Robinson as part of the video interview series, Popversations, Thomas Jane. "Some of my favorite stuff is the [Jean-Pierre] Melville stuff right now. I have a collection of all of Jean-Pierre Melville's films. That's a great section of my DVD library that I always return to over and over again."
Jean-Pierre Melville is best known for directing crime movies starring Alain Delon, such as Le Samouraï, Le Cercle Rouge, and Un Flic, in the 1960s and '70s. Melville helped solidify Delon as France's preeminent cinematic "cool guy who looks pissed off at the universe" in the '60s. If you don't believe me, please just watch Le Samouraï, you won't regret it.
With Thomas Jane's turns as a hardboiled detective on The Expanse and as The Punisher, it's easy to see a shared storytelling DNA between him and Melville's films. Part of what made Melville and Delon such a dynamic director-actor team was that Melville was committed to using Delon's scowl to speak for him as much as possible, without the actor having any lines. In other words, before aura farming was a phrase that existed in our lexicon, Alain Delon was trudging around Paris in the rain in a fedora and trenchcoat, instantly cementing Le Samouraï as among the greatest crime films ever made.
Thomas Jane isn't exactly known for playing happy-go-lucky characters onscreen (ahem, The Mist), and he's perfected his ability to play a character with a past weighing heavily on him. It's too bad that Melville has since passed away, because the world could've used a Jean-Pierre Melville and Thomas Jane collaboration.
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