The three crime films that Jean-Pierre Melville directed with Alain Delon (Le Samouraï (1967), Le Cercle rouge (1970), and Un flic (1972)) almost convince me that there can be cinéma noir shot in color. "Le Samouraï," so directly derived from "This Gun for Hire" has such washed-out colors that I remember it in black-and-white. The intensity of color is also muted in "Le Cercle rouge" and "Un flic," though the first is notably red-hued and the second notably blue-hued. All three (I don't think they were intended to form a trilogy; it's that Melville died before making any more) show highly professional criminals and police detectives as inexorable as Inspecteur Javert in "Les Misérables" closing in on the criminals.

Dialogue is minimal in all three. The lines are so few, so clearly enunciated, and so syntactically simple in "Un flic" that I could get by without the subtitles (which, I should note, are clearly visible, not lost in background as in some foreign-language films). There are some important lines in "Le Cercle rouge," but very little would be lost to viewers understanding none of the lines in "Un flic." Probably, the casting American actors (Michael Conrad who was Sgt. Phil Esterhaus on "Hill Street Blues" and Richard Crenna of "The Real McCoys" and "Slattery's People") as Frenchmen comprising half the gang encouraged paring dialogue, though if my memory correctly serves me, there is not a lot of it in "Le Samouraï," either. Alain Delon could be voluble ("The Yellow Rolls-Royce," in which he played an Italian gigolo, "The Leopard" in which he played the idealistic young Sicilian aristocrat), but was a brutal stoic in Melville's films.

Delon played a hitman (the samurai) and a cat burglar (in "Le Cercle rouge" in his first two Melville films. He switched sides of the law to play the title role of "Un flic" ("the cop"), remaining brutal and looking doomed, but further removed from being the (already doomed!) pretty boy of his breakthrough roles in "Purple Noon" (Le plein soleil) and "Rocco and His Brothers" (Rocco i fratelli) a dozen years earlier. As Paris police Commissaire Edouard Coleman, his thin upper lip is pursed, there are bags under his eyes, and the eyes themselves look out wearily on the perfidy of the world. He was 37 at the time, but looked remarkably haggard.

Although the title role is the cop, it is Crenna's nightclub owner/heist organizer Simon who has the most screen time. Simon and Coleman are both having sex with the icy blonde Catherine Deneuve (Cathy in the film, though not as informal as that version of her name!). Coleman knows that she is living with Simon and believes Simon knows about Coleman's affair. Simon is not sure that Coleman suspects him in the seaside bank robbery that resulted in two deaths but raised the funds for a bigger and less conventional heist. Coleman smacks people (including a transvestite prostitute who is a police informer) around, but does not verbalize what he knows to anyone.

I assume that Coleman lives alone, like the Delon characters in the previous Melville flicks. The samurai had a cat, and the policeman in "Le Cercle rouge" had cats. The "humanizing" aspect of Coleman is playing sentimental songs on the piano (in Simon's nightclub before it opens for business; with Deneuve around, I was waiting for him to launch into "I Will Wait For You," but he doesn't).

The movie begins with the bank robbery and a teller determined to foil it. There is no introduction to the robbers. Commissaire Coleman has who seems a typical cinema noir voice-over that introduces him as he drives through Paris as the street lights switch on, but that is it. The movie is not narrated by him, and his brief comment at the end is in response to a reproachful question from his assistant.

There is no fancy camerawork. I have already mentioned the washed-out colors and minimum of dialogue. Music is also used very sparingly. Like Bresson, Melville seems to have stripped down his materials in some sort of quest for "pure cinema" (whatever that may be). Some call this "minimalism." The two heists seem to be shot in real time and with no attempt to thrill audiences. They are tense in very un-Hollywood ways and lack spectacular special effects. Indeed, the film trailer (the only DVD "extra" other than talent files on Delon and Melville) is the most austere and undramatic trailer for a crime drama I can ever remember seeing. It is slower and more opaque than the beginning of the film, though what it shows is all from the beginning of the film (plus the marquee names of Delon, Deneuve, Melville).

There is little inducement to identify with or care about the characters in any of Melville's crime dramas. They are drained of emotion, good at what they do, devoid of joy, but humans, albeit humans of the brutal and terminally corrupt cinema noir world. I prefer the two earlier Delon/Melville films. There is much to admire in Melville's technique (and, for that matter, Richard Crenna's) in Melville's last film. It did not please 1972 crowds (who thought it old-fashioned) and is too austere and probably too cryptic for audiences accustomed to recent Hollywood action thrillers and/or to happy endings.

The DVD transfer (1.85:1 Anamorphic Widescreen) and the audio (Dolby 2.0 Mono) are good. I wish there was an interview with Delon included. He must have done some tv interviews when the film was released, even if he could not be persuaded to comment on it now. The lack of additional material is highlighted by the wealth of extras in the recent "Le Cercle rouge" DVD.


Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD