Capital Celluloid 2015 - Day 173: Mon Jun 22

Le Cercle Rouge (Melville, 1970): Regent Street Cinema, 6pm


This film screens in a double-bill with new French crime movie The Connection.

Chicago Reader review:
Jean-Pierre Melville's austere heist film, made in 1970, was his next to last; it opens with a Buddhist aphorism about fate binding two men to meet again, and ends with a police chief pronouncing all men ultimately guilty. Two prisoners return to society—Corey (Alain Delon) has served his sentence and is released, while Vogel (Gian Maria Volonte) escapes from a speeding train. They team up with a sharpshooting ex-cop to mount an exquisite jewel theft. Melville renders the taciturn crooks and corrupt inspectors with the nocturnal blue palette that is his signature. Key action points are edited with finesse, but the denouement, with its dutiful hail of gunfire, is heartless and mechanical. With Yves Montand, Andre Bourvil, and Francoise Perier.
Bill Stamets

Here (and above) is the trailer.

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