Le Cercle Rouge

Jean-Pierre Melville's 1970 Le Cercle Rouge starred Alain Delon (Le Samourai, L'Eclisse) as an ex-con who returns to Paris with the familiar trinity of trenchcoat, cigarette, and gun. Delon befriends fugitive Gian Marie Volonte (who has hid in the trunk of Delon's car) and leads one of the greatest jewel heists ever filmed. Melville's genius is to work with the tropes of American gangster movies without irony and completely within his own time and place. Melville had, of course, been long obsessed with the United States. While it is often noted that his nom de plume was taken from Herman Melville, his films seem to owe much to the restrained/repressed dynamic of Hemingway's Paris-based fiction, such as The Sun Also Rises and Men Without Women--which could double as a title for a book on Melville's cinematic characters. Le Cercle Rouge is easily among Melville's most important films, along with Bob le Flambeur (1956), Le Samourai (1967), and Army of Shadows (1969). While perhaps not quite as sparse and stylized as his other works, Le Cercle Rouge had many touches that his earlier films lacked, and the particular brand of melancholic fatalism that marks this film was never grim or bleak. Delon's sang froid performance was masterful as usual. Of special note were the roles of the lead inspector, played by Andre Bourvil, and that of the alcoholic ex-policeman sharpshooter (a brilliant performance by Yves Montand) who comes to play a significant role in the plot of the film. His detox scene was one of the best filmed.