You can judge a civilization by its level of prostitution.
Jean-Pierre Melville loved American movies, so naturally he jumped at the chance to make one of his own here. The result, shot on the streets of New York City, was 1959's Two Men in Manhattan, in which Melville himself plays a reporter for the French Press Agency who is one of the two men tasked with tracking down a missing French United Nations delegate. The other, alcoholic photographer Pierre Grasset, is decidedly the more cynical of the two, but he's the one who has an inside line on who the wayward diplomat may have been shacking up with.
From the Mercury Theater (where they talk to an actress during intermission) to Capitol Records (where they question a singer between takes) to a Brooklyn burlesque club (where we're treated to a matter-of-fact topless scene), Melville and Grasset go down the list of potential mistresses, even making a pit stop at a French-Chinese cat house to check on one who "specializes in diplomats." Other New York landmarks that Melville photographs like the tourist he is are the UN building (both inside and out), Rockefeller Plaza (to drive home that this all takes place two days before Christmas), and Times Square. He even gets a few shots of himself riding the subway, that quintessential New York mode of public transportation.
Two Men is by no means a pretty picture -- and I'm not just talking about the fact that it was made on what was evidently a very tight budget. It's fairly misogynistic in parts and, in one regrettable scene, blatantly homophobic. (Melville makes a crack about Grasset's "landlady," who is in fact an effeminate -- and easily shocked -- gay male.) There is, however, no denying how jazzed Melville was to be making a movie in the States, which is naturally reflected in all the jazz on the soundtrack. Even if he never left France again, he could at least say he got his New York movie out of his system.