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After a solemn-sounding, fake-Buddhist opening quote about the metaphysical "red circle" of the title, the movie takes off on two paralleling strands of action. Corey (Alain Delon) is released from jail and immediately joins in a plan to rob a Place Vendome jewelry store; meanwhile, Vogel (Gian Maria Volonte), another convict, manages to jump out the window of the moving train from which he is being ferried. The lines cross when Vogel, with the police on his heels, finds refuge inside the trunk of Corey's automobile. Within moments of their first meeting they have shared cigarettes and swapped pistols, and are planning the jewelry heist together. All they need is a seasoned sharpshooter to disarm the alarm system with a well-placed bullet. That's where Jansen (Yves Montand) comes in. First seen shaking from the DTs and imagining a horde of reptiles invading his room, he joins the operation less for the loot than for an opportunity to regain self-respect. Melville (1917-1973), as legend has it, replaced his own Parisian-Jewish birth name with his favorite American writer's after first leafing through Moby Dick. Having fought in the military and with the Resistance during WWII, he became a dedicated cinephile (American crime dramas were especially close to his heart) and, during the 1950s, kind of a big brother to the New Wave movement of Godard, Truffaut, Chabrol, et al. Revered by other directors for his brand of tough-guy mythology, Melville's work is waist-deep in the worn stock types and situations from the Hollywood thrillers he loved so much, yet his finest work goes beyond parodical pastiche. Because he clearly and uncondescendingly respected them, he could infuse genre tropes with a white-flame intensity that points toward meaty themes lurking beneath the pictures' steely sheen: namely, spirituality, honor, and redemption. An American director working with the same raw material, even back in the good old Don Siegel-Andre De Toth-Phil Karlson days, would have zipped through it, made it punchy, straightforward. By contrast, Melville is in no rush -- the movie's steady, languid pace is able to accommodate two scenes of Mattei calmly feeding his cats at home, with no shoehorning strain visible. Yet it is this kind of scene that offers a key to Melville's taciturn morality. The world he creates and celebrates in his films, full of grays and metallic blues, autumnal woods and glass surfaces (splendidly captured by his usual cinematographer Henri Decai), is marked by the weighty air of Doom: the possibility of betrayal, the ultimate sin in the Melvillian universe, lurks behind every relationship. ("All men are guilty. They're born innocent, but it doesn't last," intones a wizened police chief.) In a place where the wrong word or glance can lead to one's downfall, emotions need to always be kept in check -- hence the inscrutable poker face of Melville's protagonists all the way back to the characters in his 1947 debut, Le Silence de la Mer. Crooks and cops alike know that having ice water in their veins, always keeping everything close to their vests, is necessary in order to stay alive. In that sense, Alain Delon, with his hardened Riviera beauty, is the perfect Melville actor: when he dons a mask for the climatic heist, it seems like a redundant act. Shorn of emotional outlets, the characters' actions turn unexpectedly eloquent, as the cracking of a safe or the tying of a trenchcoat become windows into what they keep bottled up inside. Delon disarming a couple of thugs in a billiard joint reveals catlike pulse and terrific grace, while Montand's snazzily attired examination of the jewelry store's surveillance equipment suggests craggy suavity and spiritual renewal.
Not quite the epitome of Melville's late-stage gangsterism (that would be Le Samourai, made three years earlier), Le Cercle
Rouge is nevertheless a classic of genre cinema. After all the static and noise from recent thrillers, it is a pleasure to
watch an action flick where the action is more than an excuse to punch holes in people's torsos. Now that's cool.
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