le cercle rouge (w&d jean-pierre melville)

So, whilst we watch Godard and even Truffaut send up or deconstruct genre, it’s easy to forget how, then, as now, genre was something the French cineastes adored. Perhaps it’s not so ridiculous to think of Barthes’ structuralism in this context. There is a fascination in French culture with the way in which something is assembled. Genre is all about variations on a theme. The theme is well known, by both the audience and the filmmakers. What is interesting is not so much the narrative as the mechanics of the story. The way the pistons move, the way that one element impacts on another. Le Cercle Rouge is a great example of this. It’s a straightforward heist movie. Delon, Montand and Volontè are three suave crooks who plan and execute a robbery, each one acting for different reasons. The film luxuriates in the fact that it doesn’t have to offer any surprises. The fundamental tension of the heist movie does all the leverage that the narrative requires to engage the audience. Will they pull it off or not? The film runs at 140 minutes, but Melville was clearly confident that this tension at the heart of the mechanics of the narrative was enough to engage the viewer, allowing him to explore a neo-existential vision of characters who are willing to put themselves under inordinate pressure and confront probable doom, because life only has value when it is put in jeopardy. Which is a journey we, as the audience, sitting back comfortably, share. The whole film is endowed with a poker-faced seriousness. The experience of watching it has more in common with watching a game of chess than a wrestling match. It is precisely because we as an audience understand the genre rules, that this game of chess feels weirdly engrossing, even fifty years on. 

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An aside here is perhaps to comment on how little cinema, for all its supposed technological gains, (HD/ 3D/ dolby/ digital compositing etc) has evolved over fifty years. The shifting experience of watching a film from 1920 in 1970 would reflect a truly radical transformation, (sound/ colour/ special effects/ acting etc). Whereas a film from 1970, viewed in 2021 can feel almost contemporary.