As director, writer, and lead actor, Jean-Pierre Melville throws nearly every aspect of himself into Deux hommes dan Manhattan (US: Two Men in Manhattan), a fun, entertaining film in which he plays a New York-based French journalist tasked with finding the French delegate to the United Nations who’s missing from the General Assembly meetings. Opening with a late-in-the-cycle semi-documentary voice-over and a brassy jazz score, the film pairs journalist Moreau (Melville) with shady photographer Delmas (Pierre Grasset) whom Moreau wakes from a hungover blackout next to a naked woman and whose agenda for the hunt may differ from Moreau’s. Like in a Mike Hammer story, the pair tracks down the man by interrogating the women who know or love him: his unfriendly secretary at home, a stage actress in the middle of a performance, a jazz singer recording in studio, a stripper in a burlesque show, and a high-end prostitute in a brothel (“I know a girl who specializes in diplomats”). Melville portrays the overnight Big Apple as hedonistic, sparsely populated, and creatively energetic in certain corners; as is common in French noir, Hollywood references abound, including Burt Lancaster’s name promoted on a movie marquee for Separate Tables and Elizabeth Taylor’s face on a poster.