Watched: 07/27/2025
Format: 4K disc
Viewing: First
Director: Jean-Pierre Melville
So, there's a whole bunch of Criterion movies on sale on Amazon, and I wasn't doing much this weekend, so I got silly and justified the expense on this movie. Because.
Leave me alone. Sometimes I do things.
If you've never dipped your toe in French noir, or only watched Breathless, the French noir movement is fascinating as it's so clearly done with love for and homage to American noir (which the French coined - we just called them crime movies). I assume American culture was imported via Hollywood in the post-war years as American GI's rambled around Europe and France took a minute to get its film industry fired up again. But the American movies are refracted through the lens of a nation crawling out from occupation, and maybe contain the spirit which gave us Camus.
I mean, one of the French noir films I'd rec is called Elevator to the Gallows. Fate vs. freewill and existential dread hangs heavy on the minds of these movies - more so than American films mostly being about "don't pursue the wrong dame".
Le Cercle Rouge (1970) is a crime/ heist movie in which we're told at the outset, before we meet any characters "these people will come together, and it will go very badly, indeed". And, that is what happens.
This was my first viewing, and I very much get how and why Le Cercle Rouge is a favorite of film folk. It takes the noir concept of "you're @#$%ed" and turns it into the plural version of "you", or, as we'd say in Texas, "y'all are all @#$%ed." That is more or less the theme and thesis of the film, and it mostly delivers on that concept as fate pulls strings, tugging on our cast and drawing them inevitably into that red circle.
Alain Deleon plays a convict who is given early release by a chief prison guard so that he can take on a job the guard has come across. By sheer chance, a crook named Vogel getting transported cross-country by train makes good his escape under the watchful eye of a dutiful cop who pursues him relentlessly despite uncertainty whether Vogel is actually guilty of the crimes of which he's accused.
Vogel stumbles upon Corey's (Deleon) car and without knowing who he is - to avoid the manhunt after him - hides in the trunk. Corey drives him off, and the two form a pact - making plans to knock over the jewelry store together. Soon, they include a former police sharpshooter who hated the corruption on the force and quit - only to turn to the bottle.
In general, thematically and character-wise, I really dug the movie. It pushes the notion of making the wrong decisions and that being your fate that is the unspoken doom befalling many-a-noir protagonist and makes it explicit. Stylistically, I was with it much of the time... and at other times wanted the film to pick up the pace.
Writer/ Director Melville has created a cool, understated delivery - the characters rarely speaking, inherently understanding one another's meaning. This is largely, critically, considered to be great if Ebert's review is any indication - and I agree. Set against winter in France, the movie feels as cold as the air, and that's a feature, not a bug, as the characters move inevitably toward their doom. People's natures are their downfall, the movie says. Whether it's the desire for revenge or freedom at all costs or overcoming their personal demons by embracing criminal activity. Or a club owner who is asked to inform, but knows he can't and won't, even to save his own skin - and he pays a great and personal consequence. There's a lawman who goes to great lengths - and his chief who informs him all men are guilty - and maybe he's right.
But... there are absolutely long stretches of pensive looking characters and slow car rides that bring the pace to a crawl. The problem is an interesting one as Melville wants that introspection and for you to feel the weight the characters feel without speaking a word. He is creating *a vibe*. He's also deeply in love with crime movies of two decades prior, and outfits his characters in coats and hats even when they sit in nightclubs where everyone else is in eveningwear - reminding us that these are outsiders and men living within but on the outside of society.
But it also means that if you know these movies, you know what will happen. Even down to the heist which, look... I skipped re-watching Rififi on TCM Saturday night to watch this movie, and that movie is about 1/4th silent heist sequence. And it's breathtaking. Here, I could have seen half of the heist left on the editing room floor and gotten more out of it. Sacrilege, I know. But what didn't feel watching this movie was *tension*, and urgency felt in short supply.
I *liked* the film, but more as an academic exercise than as a movie itself. Whatever energy I felt - and sympathy I felt for the lead in Melville and Deleon's Le Samourai I didn't feel here, even while I appreciated the meticulous filmmaking.
Maybe under different circumstances - seeing this in a theater, for example - I might have been drawn in more. And I do want to rewatch it in years to come - I own it now after all. But this is one of those moments where I watched a critical darling and was left wondering kind of specifically what I was missing.
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