DVDs in Review

Le Cercle Rouge (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1970)

Title: Le Cercle Rouge (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1970)

Release date: September 13 2010

Certificate: PG

Format: Blu-ray

RRP: £24.99

Rating: 5/5

Reviewed by Dave Lancaster

Three disparate men get together for a jewel heist in Jean-Pierre Melville's masterpiece, which pulls apart the protagonists as the plot becomes increasingly unstable.

After a tight first hour, which sees an aristovratic thief (the ever cool Alain Delon as Corey) team up with a recently escaped murderer (Gian Maria Volonté as Vogel) and an alcoholic ex-police sharp shooter (Yves Montand is perfect as Jansen), Melville unravels the tension balancing a sleek thriller with uncertain developments of plot.

First we are drawn in to these powerful characters, but as they become teammates and the heist date becomes closer, we see the substantial cracks, much like Michael Mann's crime epic 'Heat' or Jules Dassin's 'Rififi'.

However, Melville is more existential than Mann and more straight-laced than Dassin even when he does channel Mann's perfectly edited action sequences and crisp photography as well as Dassin's trick of having a long, silent heist scene. Delon's steely performance is up there with 'Un Flic' and 'Le Samourai', while Montand nearly steals the show as the conflicted cop.

What's interesting about these characters is that the escaped murderer is lowest of the low, socially speaking, while the aristocratic theif hovers somewhere in the middle and the cop, who is supposed to be a strong pillar of society, is the weakest and most troubled of the bunch.

Melville injects humanity into these character types, with nice touches such as the investigating officer's love of cats or the fact that the good guys are just as adept at using dirty tactics to seek arrests as the villains are to make their crime a success. 

This is one Melville's finest films, and a true classic of French crime cinema, that deserves more attention. Thankfully, the Studio Canal Collection have done a fine job with this excellent Blu-ray which includes a decent print and some good interview footage.