from exploitation films to classic Western television series and even as far back as the Golden Age of Hollywood Quinton Tarantino's movies have always Amalgamated the tastes he developed throughout his childhood consuming everything he could get his hands on from the very beginning of his career with Reservoir Dogs has worn his Inspirations on his sleeve drawing liberally from gangster movies of the past especially Jean Pierre Melville's ludos boasting a moody atmosphere a narrative full of twists and turns and Jean Pierre Melville's unmistakable sense of pessimism lulo epitomizes a particular style of French crime dramas that were raw and more authentic than their American counterparts at the same time Melville never shied away from americanizing his films more than his French Brethren and as a result lulos provided the perfect fertile breeding ground for Quinton Tarantino's imagination while Quinton Tarantino's origin story as a latchy kid growing up in the 70s is pretty well known to the American audience Jean Pierre Melville's is not ironically Melville's Origins read like something out of a cutie script an aspiring filmmaker in his youth Melville joined the French Resistance in the 1940s to combat the Nazis invading France once the war was over he finally began creating the movies he had wanted to make all along too old to join the French New Wave along side Jean Luke Goddard and franois trufo Jean Pierre Melville was also too young to relate to the then more famous French filmmakers like Jee Renoir and Marcel Kar similar to other French filmmakers Melville was forced to work on a tight budget and his experiences in the war resulted in an overall aesthetic colored by a tur serious and often quiet directorial style like many talented artists Melville wasn't immediately recognized for the strength of his films especially in France still his highly heightened crime pictures eventually found their way across the pond to America where Cinema Fanatics like Quinton Tarantino discovered Melville's unique sense of style though he often worked in several different genres Melville's most prolific work found a way to visualize what crime looked like on French streets that were still reeling from the aftermath of World War II the results were often brutal to watch but they were also something else undeniably cool as Quinton Tarantino himself would later put it it was this exact sense of style Quinton Tarantino is referencing that lulos was Prim arily responsible for and would go on to influence not only cue but also the likes of Michael man John Woo and Ringo Lam what is Ludo about it's hard to trust criminals even if you are one Jean Pierre Melville began his crime Cinema career in 1956 with Bob llamber and hit his stride six years later with lulos in French dulos is a slang term for hat more specifically it refers to the hat worn by Shady criminals in the' 60s similar to the fedoras worn by gangsters in early America American Crime films practically speaking because these hats tended to obscure the faces of the men wearing them in Shadow the term came to refer to criminals who served as police informants in other words men who have something to hide adapted from a 1957 novel by Pierre V lisu Ludo boasts a somewhat opaque narrative the story revolves around the lives of several criminals and police most prominently the fresh out of prison Maurice Serge regiani and his friend silian Jean Paul Belmond the former plans to rob the house of a wealthy family living in the Paris suburb of Nui the robbery then goes Ary when the police are informed about the attempt Maurice barely escapes with his life and passes out only to wake up later in his friend Jean's home having miraculously been rescued it's clear that morce has been betrayed the driving question of the film then becomes by whom from there it's a series of Revelations and betrayals that ultimately results in a tragic conclusion the likes of which had to that point seldom been seen before on celluloid