The French invented the term film noir – it's supposed to have been coined in 1946 by the critic Nino Frank – but it took them years to come up with their own contributions to the genre, by which time it was very nearly played out in Hollywood. That American film noir was essential to the earliest films by most directors of the French New Wave is generally accepted; that something critical was lost in translation is just as certain. Louis Malle had a strange relationship with his peers in the nouvelle vague; like the very different Eric Rohmer, he...