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.
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