Le Cercle Rouge [The Red Circle] ***** (1970, Alain Delon, Yves Montand, Gian Maria Volontè, Bourvil) – Movie Review 2,822

Alain Delon stars a tough, cynical ex-con master crook in the 1970 Le Cercle Rouge [The Red Circle], his second of three thrilling films with Jean-Pierre Melville and fourth gangster movie.

Alain Delon stars in his second of three exciting collaborations with writer-director Jean-Pierre Melville and his fourth gangster film in the 1970 French film Le Cercle Rouge [The Red Circle]. Once again, he is ideally cast as a tough and cynical ex-con master crook called Corey, who leaves prison and crosses paths with two chance acquaintances – the notorious escaped criminal Vogel and the alcoholic former police detective/ marksman Jansen.

The trio plan and carry out an elaborate gem heist on an elegant, supposedly impregnable jewellery store in Paris, after Corey loses the money he steals from his former boss Rico.

Melville’s gritty, loving tribute to Forties American film noir thrillers is a dazzling 140-minute epic triumph, and it is brilliantly icy, like the diamond gem it is. It could hardly be more incisively made or have a better cast, with Delon, Yves Montand (Jansen), Gian Maria Volontè (Vogel) and Bourvil (as Le Commissaire François Mattei) in his final film all seen on their best form.

Delon looks impressively wrecked, with black circles under his eyes and a dodgy moustache, and so does Montand, with shocking creases on his forehead and face. Volontè looks less world weary, playing his canny character carefully and intensely. Bourvil is tremendously good as the unethical but doggedly efficient police inspector, making a big, complex thing of a dominating role. He is the antagonist to Delon’s anti-hero. Mattei is conducting Vogel by train when his prisoner escapes spectacularly, Vogel ending up hiding in Delon’s car trunk on his way to freedom. The two men’s meeting is an impressively random chance event. They were made for each other. They are yin and yang, or more like yin and yin.

And it could hardly have a more imaginative cinematographer than Henri Decaë, who carries on the chilly theme by painting a world virtually without colour in the most sombre, muted tones. The jazz-style score Éric Demarsan works a treat and Théobald Meurisse‘s production design is a downbeat pleasure.

Le Cercle Rouge climaxes in a splendidly taut and spectacular Rififi-style heist sequence on the Place Vendôme in Paris, which is about half an hour long (exactly 27 minutes) and has no dialogue (though there is still another 25 minutes of the story to go with another spectacular climax). The nerve-jangling heist sequence, filmed at the Bijouterie Mauboussin, 20 Place Vendôme, Paris, and in the Studios de Boulogne-Billancourt studio, is a brilliantly sustained exercise in suspense and tension.

However, its huge success in France was not repeated abroad in the stilted, dubbed international version cut by 48 minutes, which is largely a failure even though Melville supervised it personally. Yet this 102-minute version was re-released in 2003 to considerable acclaim.

Also in the cast are François Périer as Santi, Paul Crauchet as Le Receleur, Paul Amiot, Pierre Collet, André Ekyan as Corey’s former boss Rico, Jean-Pierre Posier, Yves Arcanel, Jean-Marc Boris, Jean Champion and Yvan Chiffre.

Serge Sauvion provides the voice dubbing for the Italian star Gian Maria Volontè.

Delon also stars in Melville’s Le Samouraï [The Samurai] (1967) and Un Flic [Dirty Money] (1972).

The title refers to the film’s epigraph which translates as ‘Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, drew a circle with a piece of red chalk and said: “When men, even unknowingly, are to meet one day, whatever may befall each, whatever the diverging paths, on the said day, they will inevitably come together in the red circle.’ Actually Melville made this up, just as he did with the epigraph in Le Samouraï.

Bourvil died of Kahler’s disease September 23, 1970 in Paris, age 53.

Jean-Pierre Melville died of a heart attack on August 2, 1973 in Paris, age 55.

Alain Fabien Maurice Marcel Delon (8 November 1935 – 18 August 2024) died peacefully at his home in Douchy, France, surrounded by family members, aged 88.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2,822

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