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Rating:  - A fine movie by Jean-Pierre Melville, and be sure to watch Army of Shadows
"All men are guilty," says the chief of the police. "They're born innocent but it doesn't last." Add this bit of nihilism to Jean-Pierre Melville's fascination with the idea of the crook's code of honor and you have Le Cercle Rouge. This code of honor among crooks, however, is not simply a cliché; it's a figment of the imagination even when film moralists -- realistic moralists by their viewpoint, romantic moralists by most others' -- began to make movies on the subject. Their theme is that it isn't what one does, but how one does it. We most often wind up with stories all about experienced men with their own sense of honor, stories where fate, fatalism and the code run things.
For most of humanity, except screen writers and movie directors, this would seriously get in the way of living one's life, raising one's children and being a good friend. This mannered fatalism is something of a self-indulgent notion. Le Cercle Rouge is, in my view, a classic film for people who may secretly enjoy the adventure of just missing the last bus home. But where Melville's Le Samourai - Criterion Collection, in my opinion, is style dominating story, Le Cercle Rouge manages the great trick of combining style with a strong story and with compelling actors. The point of the movie, in my view, is nonsense...but the movie itself is a first-class experience.
Melville's hopeless tale of three crooks -- Cory (Alain Delon), Vogel (Gian-Maria Volonte) and Jansen (Yves Montand) - is based on a bit of wisdom which is, maybe, attributed to the Buddha: That all men who are destined to meet, will...along with their destiny they cannot change. Maybe, because some believe Melville himself came up with the wording if not the thought. Either way, we know right at the start that this movie will not end happily, will depend upon fate and coincidence to set things up for us, and will leave us recalling the nihilistic philosophies we discovered and loved when we were in high school. Once Corey and Vogel meet and then gather in the unique talents of Jansen, we are off on a one-way ride to rob an exclusive, heavily protected jewelry story on the Place Vendome. The tension arises because we not only know the French police are after Vogel, we also realize that some determined crooks are after Corey.
The great pleasure of the movie, for me, came from admiring the work that Delon, Volonte and Montand brought to their characters, and the intelligent ruthlessness that Andre Bouvril brought to his character, the police captain Mattei. Melville hooked me as he developed these characters and their own situations; he built me up emotionally and then released me when he brought me to appreciate their probable fate and let me see see it happen. Melville establishes his set pieces -- the escape from the train, the escape from the woods, the later shootout in the woods, the meetings with Mattei and a man who refuses to inform -- with intriguing possibilities. He builds tension in all these cases by taking his time; a rare trait in movie making and an even rarer trait now. And Melville takes the time to build up Mattei as an individual. Mattei is a rueful, experienced man. He's a loner. He has a set routine when he returns to his apartment -- he greets his three cats affectionately, he draws his bath and while the tub is filling he sets out food for them. I don't know who Mattei is destined to meet, but I hope it's someone who likes cats.
Nihilism is always fashionable among some creative people and some critics. In most cases, I think it's a much harder task to set nihilism aside and to simply live one's life without damaging too many people. (And that's even more challenging to show compellingly in a film.) Le Cercle Rouge is a movie which, for me, tells me little, but it is in its own way, I think, a beautifully put together film.
For those who enjoy a well-planned jewelry store break-in and heist, there's Rififi - Criterion Collection. Jules Dassin manages this nihilistic story with a great deal of depth and tension. For those who simply enjoy expensive diamonds, Paris and a good mystery-drama with Catherine Deneuve, there's Place Vendome. For those who like Jean-Pierre Melville as much as I do, treat yourself to great movie making and watch Bob le Flambeur - Criterion Collection and, especially, Army of Shadows - Criterion Collection.
The Criterion DVD of Le Cercle Rouge looks very good and, on the second disc, has several extras. Criterion also includes a 24-page booklet.
Rating: - Melville's best film...
This is my favorite Melville film, one that I constantly think about. Jean Pierre Melville never gets mentioned with the French New Wave or any other film movement, even though many have acknowledged his influence (John Woo is a major fan, for example. He listed Melville's Le Samourai as his favorite film). Here the film centers around 3 thieves pulling off a startling heist. The actual heist is one of the greatest set pieces in the history of cinema, running roughly 30 minutes and with only one single word of dialogue. You are completely mesmerized despite having no dialogue. The look and style of the film is all Melville. He really was a true auteur. Many (like Woo) have tried to capture what he did, but they can't do it. His films all have a beautifully washed out, muted colour scheme. The performances are always understated, almost Bressonian in their quietness and exactingness. Melville is the epitome of cool, but his films have an underlying sadness to them, and this one is my favorite among his works. Some have suggested that us film buffs like this just because it's "different", and that's not it at all. We love it because it's simply a masterpiece.
The extras on this disc are marvelous, as they contain rare behind the scenes footage of Melville at work, and interviews with Jean-Pierre. I love the look of Melville. He is quite an imposing man, with very cool sunglasses and a great cowboy hat. It is also immensely intelligent in his answers to the interviewers. He pauses a lot before answering, making sure he says exactly what he wants to. There is also a booklet included in the DVD with more interviews from Melville. Melville is as fascinating as his films. He's one of the greatest filmmakers France ever produced, and this is his best film.
Rating:  - Intellectual Caper Film
A caper film with a fatalistic twist. The protagonists are thieves working in ignorance of larger forces around them. Clever plotting and very interesting cinematography but this movie lacks the psychological power of Melville's best work.
Rating:  - A darling of the film appreciation classes
Film buffs love this film because it is everything that film buffs love. This here is CINEMA, sonny, and don't you forget it!
Oh, of course a couple of Amazon reviewers have used such words as "passionless," "ludicrous," "unbelievable," "silly" (twice) and "clumsy" (also twice), but what do they know? They are probably people still laboring under the antediluvian notions that a film ought to make sense and, heh-heh, even be entertaining.
The essence of this movie is its coolness. The Amazon reviewers who adore it are pretty much agreed on that point. The particular flavor of coolness to be found here is late-sixtyish and very, very French.
What is this "cool," then? From "Le Cercle Rouge" it is clear that cool is wandering around Paris in expensively tailored black suits. (It really doesn't make any difference that the suits and hats are often inappropriate and generally look as though they'd come off the rack in a suburban mall. They were expensive; that was what was cool.) Cool is men ("all men," as the screenplay would have it) meeting by sheerest unlikely coincidence and entering into dangerous enterprises without devoting so much as a single instant to hesitation or weighing consequences. (And that is made even cooler by whomping up an empty but oh, so pseudo-profound quote from Buddha.) Cool is being inarticulate to the point evidencing an outbreak of lockjaw. Cool is ALWAYS doing the stupid, self-destructive thing.
I would suggest that the movie is more, much more than just cool. It is clumsy, as clumsy as a hippopotamus in tutu and toe shoes. There are big scenes that make no sense: a line of policemen at one-metre intervals marching across a perfectly open field, a ridiculous mis-application of manpower in pursuit of a flown jailbird--one who, despite hours of lead time, seems only a couple of hundred metres ahead of them. In the final sequence of the movie about `leventy-twelve uniformed flics stream onto the screen, a virtual army to capture a trio of burglars, but too late. One can only wonder why they weren't there five or ten minutes earlier when they might actually have performed some discernible function. There are smaller scenes, equally inept, such as the remarkable weather changes over the course of a short pursuit and the leap through the much too easily shattered glass to escape from a moving train. Yeah, right.
From clumsy, it's just a short step to inept. Consider the policeman, Mattei. Why is a relatively senior officer doing the drudge work of escorting a prisoner to jail? Are there no prison guards or paddy wagons in France? Having been so carelessly incompetent as to lose his handcuffed prisoner, why is he put in charge of the pursuit rather than assigned to a desk to count paperclips until his retirement? Having been placed in charge of the high-priority pursuit, why is he the chief investigator on an apparently utterly unrelated jewel heist? Why are two scenes devoted to his superior suspiciously beginning a background check on him before that particular plot-thread simply evaporates? Why does he twice have a meaningless scene in which he comes home, goes into his bathroom, comes out, and then goes into his kitchen to feed his cats? Why make such a big deal about the arrest of the son of the nightclub owner before forgeting all about it?
And since I'm asking questions, why does a man who is clearly established as violent and dangerous not even blink an eye in annoyance when a fence welshes on a deal for reasons they had both dismissed a day or two earlier? Why and how does one criminal pop up like a jumping jack where he has no reason to be and tell another to run for his life? Why does a third criminal, this one brandishing a handgun, run TOWARD an advancing platoon of armed cops like Achilles charging down upon the Trojans, rather than away from them?
In a revealing interview with the assistant director of this film, a worshipful acolyte of director Jean-Pierre Melville, the concept of the "Melville actor" arises. Melville, it seems, had definite ideas in mind for his actors and he was effective, even ruthless, in having them carried out. So ruthless, in fact, that one of his leads, Volonte, stormed out of the production and had to be coaxed back a couple of days later by Delon, no particular friend of his, with an appeal to his actorly professionalism.
Consider what Melville did to the man playing Inspector Mattei. This film was the final appearance of Bouvril (1917-1970). I find it interesting that none of the twenty-eight prior Amazon reviewers has commented that this was not a typical Bouvril role. He had won the award as best actor at the 1957 Venice Film Festival for his work in comedy. He was, in fact, one of the greatest of French comedians, one who had come out of the same music hall background as Yves Montand. From this film, you would never guess that he was anything but an aging, journeyman "Melville actor."
That chatty AD makes it clear that Melville valued talent and ability in his actors less than their conformity to his wishes. Such was Melville's prestige that Bouvril went along. The first thing the director did to Bouvril, who had not been his first choice for the role, was hobble his speech. The actor was from Normandy. By Parisian standards, he over-articulated his syllables when he spoke. Melville ordered him to cut out the articulation and to jumble his words together. Bouvril became so focused on pronunciation and the new speech pattern that any inclination he might have had to giving a performance were swamped in the mechanical delivery of the lines--exactly what the director had wanted in the first place. When all was finished, the great comedian and character man was doing more posing and reciting than anything that could legitimately be called acting. He had become in this, his last role a "Melville actor." A couple of decades later, poor Bouvril might have been described not as "acting" but as "Vogueing."
This film with the big names and the big reputation has the soul of a B-movie, an unaspiring bottom-half programmer. Its famous director has desiccated all hint of individuality, acting, logic and everything else down into the straight-forward, gracelessly "cool" and empty Melville style.
I wouldn't recommend this movie to anyone but Cahiers wannabes, but at least Adam Sandler is nowhere in sight, so ... two stars.
Rating: - Essential French cinema: Melville's 'Le Cercle Rouge .'
French film director, Jean-Pierre Melville (1917-1973) is best known for his austere films noir, Le Samourai - Criterion Collection and Le Cercle Rouge (1970). He remains an important influence for directors like John Woo and Quentin Tarantino. Le Cercle Rouge is a classic crime/drama/thriller featuring Alain Delon as the leading character, Corey, a glacier-cool master thief, released from prison on the same day that Vogel (Gian Maria Volonté), a murderer, escapes police custody by jumping from a moving train. The two meet as if by fate and then conspire with an alcoholic ex-cop (Yves Montand) to pull off a Paris jewel heist against seemingly impossible odds. Meanwhile, they are relentlessly pursued by a cat-loving inspector (André Bourvil), who seals their destinies.
The suspenseful film opens with an explanation of its title: "Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, drew a circle with a piece of red chalk and said: 'When men, even unknowingly, are to meet one day, whatever may befall each, whatever the diverging paths, on the said day, they will inevitably come together in the red circle'."
Criterion presents Le Cercle Rouge in a crisp digital transfer and a clear jazzy score; 30 minutes of interviews with director Melville, Alain Delon, Yves Montand, and André Bourvilin; and the original theatrical trailer and a 2003 Rialto Pictures re-release trailer.
G. Merritt
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