A few weeks back I saw a 60’s French crime flick by the name of Le Samourai, and it was amazing. I dug it a lot when I watched it, and it stuck with me enough that I suspect it may be a no-shit, for-real masterpiece. I decided I had to see some more by this director, a Frenchman by the name of Melville. About 2 weeks back I Netflixed an earlier film of his, Bob Le Flambeur and… well, it didn’t strike me as very good. Really talky and boring and melodramatic, compared to the lean, mean, thrilling-yet-contemplative Samourai. And then just for shits I also got Neil Jordan’s Bob le Flambeur remake The Good Thief, which was also not so hot, but maybe a little better than Bob.
Le Samourai was incredible enough that I knew I owed Melville another shot. And good thing I saw that one first and not Bob, because I might have given up on him and have never seen Samourai or Le Cercle Rouge. Rouge turns out to be a top notch crime thriller not unlike Samourai. It contains long passages of silence, most of the characters are inward and don’t talk much, the police are portrayed as somewhat fascist. Rouge even has the same star, Alain Delon, playing a not entirely dissimilar role. Although this time he has a mustache and doesn’t look nearly as sexy.
One of my favorite aspects of this one, as it was with Samourai, is that you sort of have to figure out the story as it moves along. The characters all know what they are up to, so they don’t ever stop to explain the plot. And since the criminals tend to keep conversation to a minimum, we just get to sit back and observe them put their plans in action.
The highlight of the movie is a long, mostly silent and entirely dialogue –free diamond heist sequence. Alain and his partners act out a very awesome, very complicated plan. But they are professionals, they are skilled, and they don’t trade one-liners like Ocean’s Eleven. The movie is worth watching for this sequence alone, but the rest of it is pretty good too.
I didn’t love it quite like Le Samourai, I don’t think it had the same impact or insight, but Le Cercle Rouge was still awesome, and I am definitely checking out more Melville.
As a side note, I really hate it when foreign films are released over here and they don’t just translate the title into English. Especially when the titles are this simple. Le Rouge Cercle means the
I think it’s some pretentious bullshit. As if keeping the title in it’s original language makes the movie better. It’s just like people using the phrase mise en scene. Fuckers.
Here’s a promise: if I ever go abroad and I see a DVD called La Noche de los Mortes Vivando, I promise not to get mad. So don’t anybody get mad when I just start calling foreign films by their English translation, regardless whether they were released that way over here.
On a positive note, the next Melville film I plan to check out is called Army of Shadows. Yeah, that's right, the title is in English. So things are looking up.
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