The Red Circle (1970)
It's not enough to call this a caper film. It's loaded with big French stars of the time (Yves Montand and Alain Delon among others) and it has high production values and a steady pace, so it's a serious movie. It also comes after many years now of the French New Wave, which produced more striking and original films than this. And it seems to have standing in its way its own seriousness, so that scenes are drawn out with stubborn self-awareness, showing every step of some basic activities like going up and down stairs.
Part of this is an issue of style, no doubt, and to give the filmmakers (namely director Jean-Pierre Melville) the benefit of the doubt is to highlight these visual and editing choices. But in the end there are some basic issues of involvement that are hard to avoid. It's boring stuff at times. The actors are good, even very good, at being dry and understated. But that's not necessarily good for a movie that needs more than the prospect of a crime to keep us watching. In fact, the crime itself, detailed so beautifully, is disappointing. It has highly clever aspects (the bullet melting perfectly for one), but not enough to sustain normal curiosity.
It occurred to me in the first half hour that there might be an intentional parody at work here. When the man escapes from the train, he should truly be running for his life, but he sort of half runs, half stumbles, half looks earnestly behind him. When he does the trick of hiding his tracks in the stream, he cuts directly across so the dogs can find his scent in about two seconds. And, oddly (or not oddly, in a farce) he gets away anyway, right under their noses. Unexplained.
But in fact I've never heard wind there is any farce here at all, just a lot of demands for patience. I gave it my best, and it gave it's best in return, which wasn't enough. What almost redeemed it was a very dark ending, relentless and deeply inky. Not a bad film by any means, but bring a book.
It's not enough to call this a caper film. It's loaded with big French stars of the time (Yves Montand and Alain Delon among others) and it has high production values and a steady pace, so it's a serious movie. It also comes after many years now of the French New Wave, which produced more striking and original films than this. And it seems to have standing in its way its own seriousness, so that scenes are drawn out with stubborn self-awareness, showing every step of some basic activities like going up and down stairs.
Part of this is an issue of style, no doubt, and to give the filmmakers (namely director Jean-Pierre Melville) the benefit of the doubt is to highlight these visual and editing choices. But in the end there are some basic issues of involvement that are hard to avoid. It's boring stuff at times. The actors are good, even very good, at being dry and understated. But that's not necessarily good for a movie that needs more than the prospect of a crime to keep us watching. In fact, the crime itself, detailed so beautifully, is disappointing. It has highly clever aspects (the bullet melting perfectly for one), but not enough to sustain normal curiosity.
It occurred to me in the first half hour that there might be an intentional parody at work here. When the man escapes from the train, he should truly be running for his life, but he sort of half runs, half stumbles, half looks earnestly behind him. When he does the trick of hiding his tracks in the stream, he cuts directly across so the dogs can find his scent in about two seconds. And, oddly (or not oddly, in a farce) he gets away anyway, right under their noses. Unexplained.
But in fact I've never heard wind there is any farce here at all, just a lot of demands for patience. I gave it my best, and it gave it's best in return, which wasn't enough. What almost redeemed it was a very dark ending, relentless and deeply inky. Not a bad film by any means, but bring a book.