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.  

Movie Review: Le Samourai, Starring Alain Delon, Directed by Jean-Pierre Melville (1967)

 

The cover of the Criterion Collection Blu-Ray of Le Samourai, starring Alain Delon, directed by Jean-Pierre Melville.

Poster for the 1972 US release of Le Samourai, titled The Godson.

Alain Delon, as the stylish hitman Jef Costello.

Delon wearing the iconic trenchcoat and fedora combination that he sports throughout much of the film.

Alain Delon kisses his real-life wife, Nathalie Delon, on the set of Le Samourai, 1967. Director Jean-Pierre Melville is behind them, wearing sunglasses.

Director Jean-Pierre Melville and actor Alain Delon on the set of Un Flic. Here you can see the distinctive way that Melville wears his wristwatch.

Le Samourai is one of Alain Delon’s most iconic roles. As the trench coat wearing hitman Jef Costello, Delon delivered a cool, detached performance that is a classic of screen minimalism. Directed by Jean-Pierre Melville, Le Samourai is one of the masterpieces of the French New Wave of the 1960’s.

I first saw Le Samourai when it was re-released in the United States in March of 1997. The first U.S. release of Le Samourai was in 1972, 5 years after it was released in France. Capitalizing on the success of The Godfather, it was released in the U.S. as The Godson. Ironically enough, the 1997 re-release of Le Samourai occurred just weeks before the 25^th anniversary re-release of The Godfather.

I was at least aware of who Alain Delon was before I saw Le Samourai in 1997. I may have already seen Delon as the pilot in The Concorde Airport ’79. (I was oddly obsessed with the Airport movie series, probably because the spoof Airplane! has been one of my favorite movies since I was a little kid.) I knew that Alain Delon was a handsome French leading man. Then I saw Le Samourai, and Alain Delon became the coolest, most handsome guy I’d ever seen.

Le Samourai was heavily influenced by American film noir, and even though Le Samourai was filmed in color, Melville’s color palette is so limited that it’s almost a black and white film. The movie opens with a shot of a room, and Delon blends in so much with his surroundings that we barely even notice him lying on the bed. Jef’s room is all black and gray, and it looks like it could be the bleak setting of a Samuel Beckett play. I don’t know if Melville was influenced by Beckett or not, but Le Samourai exhibits a fatalistic minimalism that wouldn’t be out of place in Beckett’s work.

The first word of dialogue isn’t spoken until 10 minutes into the movie. Yet the film pulls you in, and the first 10 minutes are a great example of establishing character and mood without using dialogue. We don’t need any dialogue, we just watch Jef, and Delon’s eyes tell us everything we need to know about his character.

Alain Delon is fantastic at conveying so much emotion without words. In Le Samourai, La Piscine, and Plein Soleil, (Purple Noon) Delon draws the viewer in with minimum effort. Yes, Delon commands attention because he’s extremely good-looking, but he’s much more than just a pretty face. In Le Samourai Delon has pared everything down to the bare minimum. There are no extraneous movements or busyness in Jef’s actions or movements. It’s a remarkable performance.

To discuss the plot of Le Samourai would be superfluous, since it’s really all about the style of the film. The supporting performances are excellent, including Delon’s then-wife Nathalie Delon, making her film debut. Nathalie Delon looks gorgeous—there’s something about those mid-60’s European women with their long, straight hair that gets me every time. Nathalie’s character wears a brown leather coat to the police station at 4AM, looking impossibly sexy.

Another newcomer to film was Cathy Rosier, a fashion model who plays the pianist in the nightclub. Rosier does an excellent job, as she needs to be interesting enough to draw the attention of the solitary Jef.

Francois Perier plays the police superintendent, and he’s fantastic. He brings a bustling energy to the role that contrasts sharply with Delon’s minimalism. The lengths that the superintendent goes to try and track down Costello are ridiculous.

The Criterion Collection Blu-Ray of Le Samourai is a gorgeous presentation of the film, and there are a generous selection of extras. There’s an interesting 1970 interview with Melville in which he says: “I’d like viewers to come away from my films unsure whether they’ve understood them. I want to leave them wondering.” That’s an interesting statement for a director to make—elsewhere, Melville talks of the filmmaker’s obligation to make popular art. But maybe part of what Melville meant is that he wants people to discuss his movies after they’ve seen them—he wants to give them something to think about on the way home.

Melville was obsessed with hats, and one of his assistant directors tells us that he and Delon spent an hour going over the exact gestures with which Jef would put on his fedora and run his hand over the brim. They practiced until it became not merely an actor repeating a gesture, but the inevitable performance of a ritual for Jef.

As I was watching Le Samourai, I noticed that Delon wears his wristwatch on his right wrist, with the watch face on the inside of his arm, rather than the outside, as most people do. I notice things like this because I’m left-handed, and I wear my watch on my right wrist, as most left-handed people tend to do. I was filled with excitement for a brief moment—is Alain Delon left-handed, just like me? A quick Google search confirmed that he’s not. Delon signs autographs with his right hand, and most of the time wears his watch on his left wrist, like most right-handers do. But the extras on the Blu-Ray showed me that Jean-Pierre Melville wore his wristwatch on his right wrist, with the watch face on the inside of his arm. For a director as attuned to detail as Melville was, he no doubt instructed Delon to wear his watch that way. I’m not sure if Melville was left-handed or right-handed, though.

Le Samourai was the first movie Delon made with Melville, and they made two more movies together: 1970’s Le Cercle Rouge, and 1972’s Un Flic. One of the documentaries included was a 2011 short film titled Melville Delon: Of Honor and Of Night, directed by Olivier Bohler. One of Melville’s nephews tells the story that Delon and Melville had a falling out after the filming of Un Flic. When Delon heard that Melville had suffered a heart attack, he wanted to fly back to Paris, but the weather was too poor. Instead, he had his chauffeur drive him back to Paris. When Melville’s nephew told Delon that Melville was dead, Delon collapsed in tears. Delon helped Melville’s widow and family after Melville’s death, indicating the strong bond that the two men shared.

Le Samourai is a cinematic masterpiece, and it’s one of the key movies in the screen career of the legendary Alain Delon.