090 - The Red Circle (Le Cercle Rouge), 1970, France. Dir. Jean-Pierre Melville.

Friday, March 31, 2017

090 - The Red Circle (Le Cercle Rouge), 1970, France. Dir. Jean-Pierre Melville.

Two days ago, in Le Samurai (1967) (088, March 29), Melville quoted from The Book of Bushido.

Today, in Le Cercle Rouge (1970), he quotes from the Buddha.

Neither one of those quotations exist.

The Book of Bushido does not exist.

Melville is a storyteller.  He made them up.

But he puts both of them to good use.

Today's quotation states that when two men are destined to come together, they will come together no matter what obstacles may try to separate them, inside the red circle.

You may be familiar with the story of Oedipus from Greek mythology.  He is told that one day, when he is older, he will kill his father and marry his mother.  Oedipus desperately tries to avoid this prophecy.  He goes the other direction, lives in another place, becomes another person.  Yet one day it happens, because it is supposed to happen.  It is his destiny.

Let us watch The Red Circle and see if Melville finds in his imaginary quotation some similar kind of destiny for his protagonists.

Is it inevitable that they will come together?  Will they come together in the Red Circle?

We begin by meeting two jailbirds.

One is named Corey, and he is played by none other than our friend Alain Delon, the protagonist from that very movie two days ago, Le Samourai.  Of Le Samourai we spoke of his piercing eyes.  He was young, lean, clean-shaven, silent, and alone.

Today he is a character actor, disguised behind a moustache and full hair, more social, still cool, still detached, but not a Samurai.  This man, Corey, is approachable.  He has a life.  He has a heart.  He has feelings.

The other is named Vogel, and he is played by Gian Maria Volonté, with big, bushy, curly hair and a body over which he does not seem to have full control.  This is our first time to see Volonté, and we are glad of it.  He comes to us from the Sergio Leone-Clint Eastwood Spaghetti Westerns A Fistful of Dollars (1964) and For a Few Dollars More (1965).

Corey is being paroled, let out of jail early for good behavior.  He wants to return to a normal life, leave crime behind, start anew.  But one of the guards has a job for him, a jewelry heist, a big score.  Corey says No.  The guard says Yes.  Corey does not want to come back, meaning he does not want to get arrested again.  The guard does not either, meaning he wants to make enough money not to have to work this crummy job anymore.

Nice way to begin your new life on the outside.  Just when you decide to be good, it is a law enforcement officer who tempts you to back into crime.

They give him his things back.  Including some pictures.  Pictures of a girl.  He does not want them.  He is bitter.  We are about to discover that his girlfriend moved on to a new man while he was in jail.  One of his former gangmates, a man named Rico.  They were not loyal to him.

Meanwhile, Vogel is getting out of jail too.  Only he is using more creative methods.  He is walking handcuffed wrist-to-wrist with police inspector Mattei.  They arrive at the train.  They enter their sleeping car.  Mattei is transporting Vogel.  He places Vogel in the top bunk.  Removes the handcuff from his own wrist and attaches it to the iron bar.  Locks Vogel in.

Mattei is no dummy.  He has Vogel handcuffed to the bedpost but he plans to stay awake all night anyway.  To keep an eye on him.  He sits upright and watches.  He moves to the lower bunk and reclines.  But he stays awake and alert.

Vogel has a pin inside his pocket.  Like a safety pin without the safety.  He removes it.  He presses it against the wall to bend it a certain way.  He shapes it.  While remaining completely quiet, completely still.  He inserts the pin into the locking mechanism.  He springs the handcuff.  Frees himself.  But he remains still, quiet, slowly removing the ladder rope from its hook, moving his legs out from behind it, getting himself into position.

Mattei sits up and rubs his face.  Vogel kicks the glass out of the window and jumps out of the moving train.

Mattei pulls the Stop lever and stops the train.

Time for a manhunt.

Vogel races through the woods.  Mattei uses up his bullets trying to shoot at him.  He hits a tree a couple times and long range.  Vogel is behind the tree.  Mattei is a good shot, but Vogel is too far away and protected.

Mattei finds a local resident quickly.  Borrows his phone.  Calls in.  Orders help.  In no time he has a line of what seems like a hundred men walking side-by-side through the woods with two dogs leading the charge.  K-9.

They sniff for the scent.  They pick up the scent.  They follow the scent.

Vogel reaches the river.  He strips and bundles his clothes.  Throws them across.  They land on the opposing bank.  He wades across.  Dresses.  Runs with his shoes untied.

The dogs reach the river.  Lose the scent.

Meanwhile, Corey has gone to Rico's house.  He rings his buzzer.  Rico wakes up.  Answers the door.  Corey speaks politely.  Asks for a loan.  Rico answers politely.  Asks him to wait until the banks open.  But both know what is really happening.  Corey's old girlfriend is on the other side of the door, in the bedroom, in Rico's bed, now behind the door, listening.

Corey does not ask.  He does not check.  He knows it.  He simply asks for the money.  Rico tries to stall him.  Rico is nervous.  Pretending to be cool.

Corey makes him open the safe.  He knows the safe is there.  Hidden behind the painting.  Built into the wall.  When Rico opens the safe Corey lunges forward.  Gets to the gun.  Takes the cash.  Leaves pictures.  The pictures of his old girlfriend given to him at the jail.  Returned to him with his personal items.  He leaves the pictures.  He no longer needs them.  He takes the cash.  He leaves.

When Rico returns to the bedroom, Corey's old girlfriend is back in bed, pretending to be asleep.  Rico calls in his men.

Corey goes to a pool hall.  It is early morning.  They are closing.  He sleeps the worker some money.  Now he has money.  Lots of money.  He took it from Rico's safe.  He is rich.  The worker lets him in.

He goes to a pool table without pockets.  Like the one in Melville's second movie Les Enfants Terribles (1950), the one in Elisabeth's dream.  It is called Carom Billiards, or French Billiards.  The object is not to sink any balls, because you cannot, but to carom the cue ball into both the other white ball and the red ball, scoring points as you go.

Corey plays with the two white balls and the one red ball.  A red ball is a red circle.

Two henchmen appear.  Sent by Rico.  From his phone call in the bedroom.  He wants his money back.  They draw.  Corey draws.  Corey is faster.  Corey shoots first.  Corey wins.  The two men go down.  Corey leaves.

Corey buys a car.  He pays cash.  He drives out to the country.  He stops at a diner.  He orders breakfast.

Meanwhile, Vogel comes up out of the woods.  On this side of the river.  He comes up to the highway.  He looks for a hiding place.  He sees the diner.  He tries all the cars in the parking lot.  One trunk is unlocked.  He gets inside the trunk.  It is Corey's trunk.

Corey pays for his breakfast and leaves.  He gets inside his car.  He drives.

We now have two criminals riding in a car together.  Both have just gotten out of jail, one by parole, one by escape.  The one driving is a free man, but he has been asked to do one more score, a big score.  The one in the trunk is a fugitive, on the lamb.

Their destinies have brought them together.

You can be sure that Corey will discover Vogel in his trunk.

You can be sure that Corey will give in to temptation and go for the big heist, the big score.

You can be sure that Vogel will go in on it with him.

You can be sure that Mattei will be after Vogel, and that after the heist he will be after both of them.

They will need an expert marksman.  The will hire a man named Jansen.  Jansen is a former cop.

Wait a second.  The man who started this heist was a guard at the jail.  The man who is going to enable it to happen is a former police officer.  Whose side are they on, anyway?

Jansen is played by none other than Yves Montand!

We first saw Yves Montand in the beginning of the year, in January, in the great action film by Henri-Georges Clouzot, The Wages of Fear (1953) (004, January 4).

Montand went on to become one of France's great film stars.  He also appeared in some American movies with international casts, including George Cukor's Let's Make Love (1960), starring Marilyn Monroe and Tony Randall; the war film Kelly's Heroes (1970), starring Clint Eastwood and Telly Savalas; Vincente Minnelli's On a Clear Day You Can See Forever (1970), starring with Barbra Streisand and Bob Newhart; and John Frankenheimer's racing adventure Grand Prix (1966), starring James Garner, Eva Marie Saint, and Toshiro Mifune.

The heist will become a major part of this movie.  A scene that lasts for half an hour.  In silence.  As we follow the men working with logistical precision, with the finesse of a fine engineer.

It is the kind of scene that Melville had wanted to film fourteen years earlier, in Bob Le Flambeur (1956), and which his screenwriter had written.  But his screenwriter at the time, Auguste Le Breton, had written two screenplays with such a scene in them.  One was Bob Le Flambeur.  The other was Rififi (1955), a heist film directed by American director in France, Jules Dassin, starring Jean Servais as Tony le Stephanois.  A scene that was so well filmed and so well received that Melville felt it would appear that he was copying it.  So with Bob Le Flambeur he went another direction and focused on other things.  Now, fourteen years later, he feels free to film the kind of scene he had wanted to film before.  And he does a fine job with it.

When you watch a film like Mission Impossible (1996) or Ocean's Eleven (2001), you are watching film that stands in a tradition of heist films going back to these great classics, The Asphalt Jungle (1950), Rififi (1955), Bob le Flambeur (1956), Ocean's 11 (1960), Topkapi (1964), The Red Circle (1970).  What others can you name?

The heist will succeed, but that does not mean that Corey and Vogel are out of the woods.

Mattei has something to prove.  He allowed a criminal to escape under his watch.  His boss believes in him but others are questioning his competence.  He has cost the department a lot of money.  A lot of embarrassment.  And the good will of the public.  He has also allowed a man to go free who might commit a crime again.

He is determined to get his man.

He has an ace up his sleeve.  A nightclub owner named Santi.  A man who owes him a favor.  Because Mattei helped Santi out awhile ago.  Helped him get out of some trouble.  He can call in that favor any time.  And he does.  He puts the heat on Santi.  Santi resists.  He pretends to arrest him, bring him in, save Santi's reputation in the underworld so that it appears coerced, so that he does not come across as an informant.

But Mattei gets Santi's family involved.  His son.  And it becomes personal.

Melville coming off his epic masterpiece Army of Shadows has made another epic film.  This one at two hours and twenty minutes.  Yet he is back in his home turf, the crime drama.  And nothing is wasted.

It will all come to a head.  A final showdown.

Inside the red circle.