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LE CERCLE ROUGE |
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Director:
Jean-Pierre Melville
Screenplay: Jean-Pierre Melville
Cast: Corey: Alain Delon
Jansen: Yves Montand
Captain Mattei: André Bourvil
Vogel: Gian Maria Volonté
Santi: François Périer
Running time: 140 minutes
Production: France/Italy, 1970
Rating: Not rated (violence, brief nudity)
Gauge: 35mm (color); enquire re DVD
Language: French
Distributor: Rialto Picture
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"In
their rhythm and scope, his films are the equal of the best of Fuller
or Hawks, but Melville’s soul lies elsewhere, in poetry, in dreams.
So we must also compare him to the great Japanese masters because
his characters are always inhabited, they claim our interest because
they have an inner life, a shadow zone, a secret... This patrician
cinema, over which the shadow of death hovers haughtily, is purely
Asian cinema, a cinema of total contemplation." Henry Chapier,
Combat (1970). |
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Jean-Pierre
Melville, father of the French New Wave, inspiration for Godard
and Truffaut, and later Jarmusch, Tarantino and John Woo, was in
top form in 1970 with Le Cercle Rouge: a cool, elegant masterpiece
of film noir featuring taciturn, professional criminals with codes
of honor harking back to the days of the samurai. Steeped in an
atmosphere of doom, the doleful protagonists seem all too well aware
that the machinery of fate is working against them. Just out of
prison after a five-year stint, Corey gets a hot tip on a big job:
a jewelry heist at Place Vendôme. Meanwhile, Vogel, a dangerous
criminal being escorted on the night train to Paris by Captain Mattei,
escapes. Mattei launches a manhunt, but Vogel hides in the trunk
of Corey’s car. Driving north, Corey is ambushed by two thugs
but saved at the last moment by Vogel. The two decide to execute
the heist together and hire Jansen, an alcoholic ex-police officer,
to help them out. With enemies in both the police force and the
mob, the prospect of success looks slim. They’re compelled
to try: their métier is their life. Deliberately-paced, with
every action, every gesture given its full weight, the film generates
suspense through the very inevitability of its involuted plot.
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| PHOTO Rialto
Picture |
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