Le Cercle Rouge

Watched a bit of this without subtitles when I was in Paris last summer. Didn’t really know what was going on back then, but now I’m not sure why I didn’t, because really, about 75% - 80% of this movie had no dialogue at all and even little to no music.

Anyway, despite the ultra super crazy slow pace with long bouts of silence (aside from sound effects) that could’ve very well made this a silent film, it was still pretty good, if you can bear to sit through it. I didn’t find it as painfully slow as my father did, but it was still quite slow. For North American audiences who are used to crime films being about 100000x more action-filled, the pace of this crime movie will boggle your mind. At least the suspense is still kept (and kept very, very well, due to the lack of speaking), but was it really necessary to film every single minute detail of pretty much everything ever? The heist scene was particularly slow, even if I get that seeing the whole process can be intriguing (I personally liked it, but my father did not). Speaking of the slow pace, it seems to be a characteristic (or illness) of most French films (that I’ve seen, anyway).

But anyway, a good thing that came out of this slow pace was that there was some very nice cinematography going on. Lots of good cropping and angles, really. Google the title and look at the screenshots and you’ll sort of see what I mean.

I cannot adequately rate the performances at all since everyone looked cool, calm, and indifferent all the time, especially Alain Delon (who incidentally does not seem to know how to drive in the movie, either - He kept turning the wheel when the “car” was going straight). The only real bout of emotion came from one Yves Montand, and even if it was convincing, it’s not much to go on for rating purposes.

I guess that the most significant part of the film is the story, though, which was very written and developed despite taking a very…long…time to pan out. I also liked the characters even if they didn’t actually have that much character. My favourite was maybe the roles played by Bourvil and Montand, for superficial reasons such as having 3 cats with awesome names as well as an unexpected kitchen door (Bourvil) and being well-versed in ballistics (Montand). 77/100