Movie Review: Farewell, Friend starring Alain Delon and Charles Bronson (1968)

Charles Bronson and Alain Delon. This picture just radiates coolness.

If you put French icon Alain Delon and American tough guy Charles Bronson together, you would expect some serious fireworks on the screen. That’s exactly what we get in the slick 1968 thriller Farewell, Friend. In French, the title is Adieu l’ami, and when the movie was finally released in the US in 1973, it was given the title Honor Among Thieves. But whatever the title, the movie is a fun piece of entertainment.  

In 1968, Alain Delon’s career was well established in France. After spending a disappointing year or so in Hollywood in 1964-65, Delon was now in the middle of an astonishing run of hits in France. Delon was making three movies a year, and they were all successful at the box office. In 1967 he was in The Last Adventure, Le Samourai, and Diabolically Yours. 1968 saw the release of Spirits of the Dead, The Girl on a Motorcycle, and Farewell, Friend. 1969 gave viewers La Piscine, The Sicilian Clan, and Jeff.  

Charles Bronson had a much longer road to establish himself as an actor than Delon did. By 1968, Bronson had established himself as a star character actor in the classic ensemble action movies The Magnificent Seven, The Great Escape, and The Dirty Dozen. He had also played supporting roles in dramas like The Sandpiper, with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, and This Property is Condemned, with Natalie Wood and Robert Redford. But Bronson had yet to headline a Hollywood hit all by himself. Part of this was no doubt due to Bronson’s unusual looks. If you look up “rugged” or “craggy” in the dictionary, you’ll find a picture of Charles Bronson. And while Bronson’s rugged, craggy looks might play great when surrounded by more conventionally handsome actors like Steve McQueen and James Garner, would Bronson really be able to carry a movie all by himself? Hollywood wasn’t quite sure.  

Farewell, Friend begins with Delon and Bronson meeting by accident as they are both finishing up their French military service. Bronson was part of the Foreign Legion, and Delon was a doctor. It feels fitting to use the actor’s names rather than their characters, since they are essentially playing their star personas. Both Delon and Bronson are able to do so much acting while doing so little physically, and with minimal dialogue. They are both great examples of effective movie acting. 

Delon is helping the girlfriend of his friend who was killed in the Army, played by the lovely Olga Georges-Picot. She enlists Delon’s help in trying to break into a company’s safe to put some missing documents back into the safe. But the fool-proof plan hits some snags—the camera that she promised would take photos of the seven-digit combination to the safe only has clear photos of three of the numbers. Delon is prepared to stay in the basement during the Christmas holiday weekend and try all of the possible combinations to the safe. But guess who keeps showing up, just like a bad penny, huh, doc? That’s right, it’s Bronson.  

Bronson and Delon are now locked in the basement with the safe, and they have to avoid the security detail, which comes around every 12 hours. Bronson doesn’t believe Delon’s protestations that he’s only going to put documents into the safe and not take any money out of the safe. The tension ratchets up when they fall asleep and aren’t able to escape from the vault before the security detail comes. Now they are locked in with the safe, with seemingly no chance to escape until several days later, when the workers will return from the Christmas weekend. The increasing heat in the room compels Delon and Bronson to take off their shirts, a sight that no doubt pleased female audience members. It’s been a while since I’ve seen The Great Escape, so I had forgotten how massive Charles Bronson’s arms were—he obviously spent some time at the gym.  

There’s a great shot where we see Bronson and Delon’s feet start walking in unison—the two men become one. Thus continuing the theme of doubles that runs throughout Delon’s filmography: Plein Soleil, La Piscine, Spirits of the Dead, Le Cercle Rouge, Mr. Klein.  

Bronson and Delon were like opposites in appearance—Delon with his delicate, almost feminine prettiness, and Bronson with his rough, craggy features. But they were both intense, magnetic performers: you can’t take your eyes off of them on the screen, no matter what they are doing.  

Farewell, Friend was yet another heist movie for Delon. The heist sequence is probably even longer than the 30-minute-long heist in Le Cercle Rouge. But while the heist in Le Cercle Rouge left me feeling cold and uninvolved, I thought the heist in Farewell, Friend was tense and exciting. The viewer knows that the stakes are high for Delon and Bronson’s characters, and that lends the sequence a tense excitement. The late 1960’s art direction and set decoration is fantastic as well, creating a memorable maze-like basement where Delon and Bronson are stuck.  

Farewell, Friend would alter Charles Bronson’s career by providing him with a huge hit in Europe and proving that he could be a leading man. Later in 1968, Sergio Leone’s classic Once Upon a Time in the West would further elevate Bronson’s standing among European audiences. Bronson would become one of the most popular American actors in Europe, especially in France. Starring almost exclusively in action movies, Bronson forged a long and fruitful career.  

Delon and Bronson appeared together again in Red Sun, a 1971 spaghetti western that also starred Toshiro Mifune, Ursula Andress, and Capucine. That’s on my list of movies to watch.  

The Kino Lorber Blu-Ray of Farewell, Friend features an interview with the director, Jean Vautrin. Vautrin started out directing short films, then moved into full-length features. In the mid-1970's, Vautrin stopped directing, but continued writing screenplays and novels. Vautrin also directed Alain Delon in 1969’s Jeff. Vautrin talks in the interview about what a difficult time he had with his two stars on the set of Farewell, Friend. Vautrin said that Bronson was mainly dismissive of the French—when he felt that the set was too flimsy, he broke off a piece of the vault and slammed it on the floor. Hopefully Bronson’s attitude improved as he made more films in France. Vautrin never got along well with Bronson. Vautrin described Delon as a mercurial presence, who was often withdrawn and introspective, but could sometimes be the personification of charm. That doesn’t really surprise me too much. In a way I would be disappointed if Alain Delon was a perfect angel on every film set he was on. I can’t imagine that an actor would be capable of the great, brooding performances Delon gave without having some of that melancholy in his soul.  

Farewell, Friend is also notable for being the second film to showcase Charles Bronson’s iconic mustache. The first film that Bronson had a mustache in was Villa Rides, filmed just before Farewell, Friend. But Farewell, Friend shows Bronson looking like how I always picture him: long hair, almost Beatle-esque, but always with a few strands askew, and his signature mustache, with a little gap in the middle of it.  

Farewell, Friend is a fascinating little movie, and fans of Alain Delon and Charles Bronson should check it out.  

Movie Review: Le Cercle Rouge, starring Alain Delon and Yves Montand, directed by Jean-Pierre Melville (1970)

Jean-Pierre Melville’s 1970 heist movie Le Cercle Rouge (The Red Circle) is often described as a masterpiece of French crime cinema. Le Cercle Rouge stars Alain Delon, Yves Montand, Gian Maria Volonte, and Andre Bourvil. I’m a big fan of Melville’s previous film with Delon, the stylish 1967 movie Le Samourai, so I had high expectations for Le Cercle Rouge, but I just didn’t enjoy it as much as Le Samourai.   

In Le Samourai, every aspect of the production, from the sets to the costumes, was stylishly designed and seemed to be the product of a singular artistic vision and imagination. Le Cercle Rouge, in contrast, felt more run of the mill and less individual. Maybe that was a deliberate choice that Melville made, but it made Le Cercle Rouge less interesting to watch. Both movies are not really about the plot and the story, so when the artistic and design choices are uninteresting, like in Le Cercle Rouge, there’s not much to hang onto.  

This lack of stylishness can be exemplified by the cars the characters drive in Le Cercle Rouge. Delon buys a nondescript black Plymouth Fury III sedan. Yves Montand drives a green Mercury station wagon with fake wood paneling on the side. Maybe this was cool and ironic for French audiences at the time to see these French film icons driving big American cars, but for me I just see how totally boring those cars were, even in 1970. Speaking of the car scenes, the scenes with Delon, Montand, and Volonte in the car were all done with rear projection, rather than real driving, which was disappointing.  

There are no significant female roles, and I’m not even sure if there are any females who have speaking roles in Le Cercle Rouge. It’s a man’s world, to paraphrase James Brown. But look for Delon’s girlfriend Mireille Darc in a non-speaking role as the woman who gives him a flower.  

While I enjoy Melville’s visual style, I found the numerous wipe edits in the second half of the movie distracting. They also struck me as surprisingly amateurish, given Melville’s status as a veteran filmmaker.  

Italian actor Gian Maria Volonte, notable for his many roles in Spaghetti Westerns, plays a character who is sort of a double of Delon’s character. The theme of a character doubling for another is a frequent theme in Delon’s movies: Plein Soleil, La Piscine, Mr. Klein, and Spirits of the Dead, to name a few. I thought Volonte delivered an excellent performance, but Melville did not like working with Volonte.  

From the 1971 book Melville on Melville, excerpted in the Criterion Collection liner notes, Melville had this to say about Volonte: “He never at any moment made me feel I was dealing with a professional. He didn’t know how to place himself for the lighting...I can tell you, I won’t be making any more films with Gian Maria Volonte.” Ouch. Volonte had been a film actor for 10 years and made more than 25 movies by 1970, so Melville’s characterization of him as unprofessional seems surprising to me.  

Delon plays a man just getting out of prison, which was almost a cliche for him at this point in his career. Suffice it to say, he is not able to stay on the straight and narrow path. He encounters Volonte’s character when he stows away in the trunk of Delon’s car. Volonte is on the run, having escaped from the custody of police inspector Bourvil. Delon and Volonte quickly team up, and Volonte introduces Delon to Montand’s character, an ex-police officer and a crack shot who they will need for the heist they are planning.  

The supporting actors all give superb performances. Francois Perier, who played the obsessed police detective in Le Samourai, is here as a nightclub owner. Andre Bourvil, often known as simply Bourvil, was best known for his comedic performances and for his singing, but here he gives an excellent performance as the methodical police inspector. Sadly, it was one of Bourvil’s final performances, as he died from multiple myeloma just a month before the release of Le Cercle Rouge. Bourvil’s performance was probably my favorite in the movie. 

Le Cercle Rouge is most famous for the long heist sequence at the end of the movie. It’s a dialogue-less sequence that unspools in basically real time, and it accounts for about 30 minutes of the film’s 140-minute running time. It’s a triumph of technical filmmaking, to be sure. And that’s exactly the problem with the heist sequence. Because the three actors, Delon, Volonte, and Montand, are all masked for the whole sequence, there’s no opportunity for them to do any acting. There are hardly even any close ups where they have to act with their eyes. The sequence thus becomes stripped of any human engagement, and instead of being thrilling and tense, it becomes a fetishization of the process, the procedure. This fits with the whole masculine vibe of Le Cercle Rouge: things happen; the plot progresses, but emotion is left out of the equation.  

I’m glad I watched Le Cercle Rouge, it’s still an interesting film, especially for anyone interested in French cinema, but ultimately it left me feeling slightly empty, much like one of Melville’s protagonists.