WHAT THE FRENCH CRITICS SAID...

"Perfection! The word has been used so often to describe Melville's films that it's become hackneyed. We'll have to find a new, stronger, adjective. Perfection of the heist. This old chestnut of crime movies here becomes a sequence you think you're seeing for the first time. Perfection of the action. We know how painstaking in his conviction and patience he is when working out his plots and shooting scripts. Perfection of color. And, last but not least, perfection of acting. It bears repeating: Le Cercle Rouge?  A perfect circle."
-- Jacques Fluer, Paris Jour, Oct. 23, 1970

"Why is it that this model of dark intrigue holds us spellbound? Because behind his tale of dark deeds and brutality, Melville superbly interweaves his secret themes: solitude, friendship, betrayal and degeneration. He uses the clash of cops and robbers to deal with what is grandiose and murky in mankind. And if one dares use the word "tragedy," it's less because of the painstaking dramatic mechanisms than because of the glimpse we have of the lost, primitive souls of these heroes with deadpan faces."
-- François Nourissier, L'Express, Oct./Nov. 1970

"As early as Le Doulos, we realized that Melville's purpose had nothing to do with the American action movie to which he is always being compared: a marvelously resourceful film craftsman, Jean-Pierre Melville aims much higher than the perfectionism of the professional: in their rhythm and scope, his films are the equal of the best of Fuller or Hawks, but Melville's soul lies elsewhere, in poetry, in dreams. So we must also compare him to the great Japanese masters because his characters are always inhabited, they claim our interest because they have an inner life, a shadow zone, a secret... This patrician cinema, over which the shadow of death hovers haughtily, is a purely Asian cinema, a cinema of total contemplation."
-- Henry Chapier, Combat, Oct. 22, 1970

"Only Melville could recreate this strange universe, of unreal images, of misty landscapes."
-- Jean Tulard, Guides des Films

RETURN TO TOP.

Questions/Comments? E-mail Film Forum. Box Office: 212-727-8110. Independent premieres at Film Forum are selected and programmed by Karen Cooper. Repertory screen is programmed by Bruce Goldstein. (Schedule subject to change). © 2002, The Moving Image, Inc. All rights reserved. Not to be reproduced without permission. Website Manager: Richard J. Hutchins. This page was last updated on December 16, 2002