Hong Kong action director John Woo re-released Jean-Pierre Melville's 1970 thriller "Le Cercle Rouge" to theatres this past summer, a restored version of a film that few Americans would have seen on its initial release. Current viewers will be familiar with its conventions, many of them drawn from American films: the policeman and villain whose obsessions and mirror the other's, a mannered visual sensibility in an action context, and a stylishly affected, world-weary cynicism. Woo, best known for "Hard Boiled" and "The Killer," had absorbed its influence.
"Le Cercle Rouge" owes a great deal to Jules Dassin's 1955 film "Rififi," which is often considered the original heist film, or at least the most widely imitated. That film's story of a Paris bank robbery includes finely drawn underworld characters, scenes of precise planning for an ambitious crime, and the inevitable, tragic consequences of disloyalty, but is most famous for its tense, wordless 20-minute centerpiece, the heist itself. Those conventions, some inherited from even earlier films but codified by Dassin, can be found in any number of recent Hollywood films, from "The Italian Job" to "The Score."
Melville absorbs and expands the formula. At two hours and twenty minutes, "Le Cercle Rouge" features minimal dialog, extending the tense silence of "Rififi"s robbery sequence to feature length; the musical score is often little more than a subdued, jazzy cymbal wash. Its performances, by Alain Delon, Yves Montand, and Andre Bourvil as the policeman who pursues them, possess a nearly comical gravity. Fully buttoned trench coats are worn indoors, and sunglasses are used at night, while offbeat pronouncements on the corruptibility of man punctuate conversation. In his emphasis on the visual and unspoken, Melville elides the procedural details that define "Rififi"; the heist's preparations take place largely off screen.
The end result is Melville's finest work, often achieving a rare poetry in spite of occasional contrivances: the titular conceit of the "red circle", the cosmic point at which destinies cross, and the intense self-consciousness of its Parisian cool. Like many products of a distinct era, both its period detail and obsolete sensibility are unmistakably evocative. "Le Cercle Rouge" also bookends a richly inventive period in which French directors paid homage to American films, most notably Jean-Luc Godard to the gangster genre and Truffaut to Alfred Hitchcock. It also marked the near end of Melville's career; he directed one more feature, 1972's "Un Flic", featuring Alain Delon along with Catherine Deneueve, before his death in 1973.
The new Criterion DVD release of "Le Cercle Rouge" benefits from Woo's restoration and includes a 24-page booklet with an introduction from the filmmaker, as well as essays by film critics Michael Sragow and Chris Fujiwara. A second disc offers an interview with Rui Nogueira, editor of Melville on Melville, in addition to on-set footage featuring interviews with the director, Alain Delon, Yves Montand, and Andre Bourvil.
© 2003 by Sten Johnson. All rights reserved.