Le Cercle Rouge
Director: Jean-Pierre Melville
Genre: Thriller, Crime Fiction, World cinema, Crime Thriller, Caper story, Drama
Year: 1970
Country: France, Italy
Language: French Language
Starring: Alain Delon, Bourvil, Yves Montand, Gian Maria Volontè, Paul Amiot, Pierre Collet, Paul Crauchet, Andre Ekyan, François Périer, Jean-Pierre Posier
Le Cercle rouge (French pronunciation: [lə sɛʁkl ʁuʒ], The Red Circle) is a 1970 crime film set in Paris, France. It was directed by Jean-Pierre Melville and stars Alain Delon, Andre Bourvil, Gian Maria Volonté and Yves Montand. It is perhaps best known for its final heist sequence which is about half an hour in length.
The film's title means "The Red Circle" and refers to the film's epigraph which translates as
In fact, the Buddha said no such thing; Melville made it up just as he did with the epigraph in Le Samouraï.
Vincent Canby, in a 1993 review of a 99-minute version dubbed into English, said the film "may baffle anyone coming upon him for the first time"; according to Canby:
Peter Bradshaw, in a 2003 review of a 102-minute reissue, called the film a "treat" and noted "Melville blends the Chandleresque world of his own devising with gritty French reality. With its taut silent robbery sequence, his movie gestures backwards to Rififi, and with Montand's specially modified bullets it anticipates Frederick Forsyth's Day of the Jackal and the contemporary techno-thriller."
Hong Kong director John Woo wrote an essay for the Criterion DVD of Le Cercle rouge arguing the film's
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Internet Movie Database