Jean-Pierre Melville, born Jean-Pierre Grumbach (October 20, 1917 – August 2, 1973), was a French filmmaker. While with the French Resistance during World War II, he adopted the pseudonym Melville as a tribute to his favorite American author, Herman Melville. He kept it as his stage name once the war was over. Description above from the Wikipedia article Jean-Pierre Melville, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.