Le Silence de la mer

Filmed in 1947, Le Silence de la mer is the first installment of a trilogy by Melville devoted to France under the Occupation; Léon Morin, prêtre (1961) and L’Armée des ombres (1969) would complete the cycle.

Melville, who had been a member of the Resistance, read Le Silence de la mer in London during the war and resolved to bring it to the screen. He founded his own production company, but when he sought the adaptation rights he discovered that Louis Jouvet had already secured them. After several unsuccessful attempts to approach Vercors himself, then head of the Comité national des Écrivains (CNE) and of Éditions de Minuit, many would have given up. Melville persisted, and Vercors eventually agreed to an unusual arrangement the young director proposed: if the film failed to win unanimous approval at a private screening before an audience of former Resistance members, Melville would destroy the negative. Vercors also lent him his own house in Villiers-sur-Morin, in Seine-et-Marne, which served as the film’s main setting.

By the time the film opened in theaters on April 22, 1949, at the Gaumont-Palace-Rex — then the largest French distribution network — it had already won Vercors’s full approval at the celebrated private screening held on November 11, 1948: “For a year — the happiest of my life, I must say — we lived in utter poverty. But the feeling of accomplishing something important while having nothing was wonderful.” Jean-Pierre Melville.

A rare poster in its original 120 x 160 format, carefully mounted on linen. This first version was printed in only a few hundred copies. It is absent from most major collections.

Light cracking to the center and to the original varnish, otherwise very good condition for this spectacular and legendary poster.