Four in the red circle

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Movie
German title Four in the red circle
Original title Le Cercle rouge
Country of production France
original language French
Publishing year 1970
length 140 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Jean-Pierre Melville
script Jean-Pierre Melville
production Robert Dorfmann ,
Jacques Dorfmann
music Eric Demarsan
camera Henri Decaë
cut Marie-Sophie Dubus ,
Jean-Pierre Melville
occupation

Four in the red circle (original title: Le Cercle Rouge ) is a French gangster film from 1970 . The screenwriter and director was Jean-Pierre Melville . The heist movie shows a spectacular break-in that takes place in real time and without dialogue, embedded in a longer prehistory and a comparatively short aftermath. The three perpetrators, acting from very different motives, are played by Alain Delon , Yves Montand and Gian Maria Volonté  - André Bourvil's detective .

Working externally with economical means, the film ties a “subtle and refined psychological fabric, chains of motifs and ever new circles of reference” to an “artful, hermetic red circle”. Melville's penultimate film is widely regarded as his most mature work and a style-defining noir classic.

action

The professional burglar Corey is released early from prison in Marseille after five years in prison for good conduct . A guard had previously given him the tip for a lucrative deal: the break-in at a Parisian luxury jeweler, whose apparently perfect security system he claims to know as well as the only loophole in it. Corey first goes to his ex-accomplice Rico, whose liaison with his former girlfriend he suspects, and steals money and a gun. In a billiard room he is caught by two of Rico's henchmen; one of the two is fatally hit in the scuffle; Corey loots another pistol and escapes. He hides both weapons in a bag in the trunk of his newly acquired car, with which he sets off for Paris, where he also lives. On the way he is checked twice by the police who are looking for the fugitive inmate Vogel.

Shortly before, Vogel was able to escape from the Marseille – Paris night train, although his companion, the Parisian Commissioner Mattei, had handcuffed him. At the second check, Corey knows that Vogel is now in his trunk; he had previously heard about the spectacular escape on the car radio, had seen him get into a stopover in a restaurant parking lot and had guessed his identity. He deceives the police, introduces himself to Vogel and lets him go on, hidden in the trunk. Shortly afterwards he is overtaken, pushed off the road and stopped. Again there are two of Rico's henchmen (one of them the survivor from the billiard room) who want to rob Corey and liquidate him. Vogel intervenes and shoots both of them, faking a private feud, with their weapons. At the same time he seals the alliance with Corey. In return, he involved in the planned break-in. To do this, in addition to a fence, they also need a sniper who can override the security system of the jewelry store with a single rifle shot. Your choice falls on the ex-police officer Jansen, who sees the job as an opportunity to get away from his alcohol addiction.

Vogel is being chased parallel to the preparation of her coup. The chief of police commissioned Inspector Mattei to manage it, although he mistrusted him after the breakdown in the night train. Routine investigations lead Mattei, among other things, to Vogel's ex-buddy Santi, with which he is on the right track, because Corey and Jansen use his nightspot as a meeting place. Ultimately, however, it is not just this small blemish that makes the trio - outside of their perfectly sophisticated and successful break-in - fail. Rico comes into play again by forcing the truth out of the prison guard and then persuading the fence, who had promised to sell the stolen jewelry, to withdraw. Looking for a replacement, the three of them turn to Santi and could have trusted in his loyalty had it not been for Mattei's help when an action against Santi, which he planned only as a ruse, surprisingly reveals that his son is actually a criminal . So Mattei, disguised as a fence, has a decisive role in Santi's establishment and is able to deceive Corey. In the showdown, the fictitious handover of jewelry, Vogel and Jansen intervene again, but can no longer turn the tide. The trio dies in an exchange of fire with the police.

shape

title

The film begins with an epigraph or motto : Siddharta Gautama, / the Buddha, // drew a circle in red chalk / and said: / If it is predetermined / that people should / should see each other / again, / whatever happens to them / Whichever way they walk, / on the given day they will inevitably meet each other “in the red circle”. // Rama Krishna

As in The Ice Cold Angel , Melville made up the introductory quote himself.

In a narrower sense, as the German title suggests, it is the four main characters who meet again in the final showdown: Mattei as a false fence; Corey as the boss of the trio and the only one who doesn't know the inspector; Vogel secretly following Corey because of suspicions; Jansen, who is well known to Mattei from the police force and who has already given up his share of the booty, but accompanies Corey out of loyalty and gratitude.

The French original title Le cercle rouge ( The red circle ) leaves open which of the figures should also be included in the "circle". Four other men who are missing from the showdown, but who helped to bring it about, are certainly among them: Santi, Rico, the fence and the prison guard. One can also count the police chief who is to be added at the end. His dogma ("There are no innocents. People are criminals") seems to be confirmed, and consequently the final sentence of the film belongs to him too, as he once again affirms to the inspector: "All people, Monsieur Mattei."

The red circle is set in the picture like a leitmotif in the very first shot: by the red traffic light that the driver who brings Mattei and Vogel to the train station drives over (on request); at the same time, other leitmotifs and themes of the film are posted: the violations of the law, including the law enforcement officers, as well as the role of chance (without this violation, both might have missed the train, Vogel would certainly not have met Corey, etc.). The reference to the title is even clearer when Corey chalked the tip of the cue with a red circle before his first pool. The red billiard ball and later the red rose, which one of Santi's animators Corey hands over to the disguised inspector immediately before the first meeting and which Vogel also holds in Vogel's hands before the second and last meeting, are also striking.

The following interpretations draw attention to very different aspects: the red as a contrast signal in an overall (deliberately) dreary color composition; the red circle as a metaphor for a ball penetrating the heart; the circle that closes in the animation as a symbol for the fateful link between the men.

genre

Four in the red circle is one of the most famous heist movies and is counted among the noir classics. The German film poster from 1970 announced it as a thriller , and Melville himself called the film that. He also described it as a western set in a French context .

Ginette Vincendeau, author of the book "Jean-Pierre Melville: An American in Paris", initially assumes that Melville's works can be assigned to two groups, resistance and gangster films , and distinguishes two phases in the latter: the early in the 1950s and the "classic" one, which begins in 1962 with The Devil with the White Waistcoat and which also includes four in the red circle .

In connection with its provenance , Wolf Donner classified Vier in the red circle when it appeared as a French gangster film - a genre that was just as firmly defined for him at the time as the spaghetti westerns . In Melville's penultimate film, he saw this exemplarily confirmed, as it contained everything that characterizes this sub-subgenre of crime fiction : from the great coup and the persecution of a refugee prisoner to unsentimental male friendships to the fact that corruption and brutality are here and there the gangsters like the police.

style

“A thriller”, advertised the tagline of the German film poster, “hard as granite, cold as polar ice and logical like a mathematical equation.” Wolf Donner put it even more pointedly at the time: Melville's films were “of a fascinating cold beauty, consistently unrealistic, aesthetic, stylized, permanently full of cool, whirring tension ”.

From today's point of view, Ginette Vincendeau judges a little more factually: Melville's classic gangster films are more laconic than his earlier and visually less opulent; Music is used more sparingly, and the actors act more withdrawn. This change becomes particularly clear in Jean-Paul Belmondo , who previously liked to act impetuously - unlike Alain Delon , who already brought the reduced game with him and who, precisely for this reason, also became the main actor in Melville's last three gangster films.

Chris Fujiwara also thinks that Melville offers the viewer neither “ action ” nor “ suspense ” in the common sense, and experiences his films as contemplative . Finally, director John Woo admires Vier in the red circle especially for the fact that so much is kept silent in him - not only during the 20-minute break-in scene.

interpretation

According to Ginette Vincendeau, there are three key factors that help understand the nature of Melville's works.

One of them is his passionate love for cinema - especially American film and American culture in general. According to Vincendeau, an interview that Melville gave to the Cahiers du Cinema in 1961 shows that he particularly admired and emulated two virtues in American film: entertainment and professionalism. Melville's passion for America then led him to the gangster film , which ultimately made him popular himself.

The second aspect is Melville's personality. In his profession as a director he was considered extremely difficult because he was perfectionist, demanding, authoritarian, even tyrannical - but at the same time enjoyed the highest appreciation for his expertise and mastery. A certain affinity between the author and some of his creations cannot be overlooked. Men are often shown who have special skills and who go to great lengths to “gold” them so that they earn respect despite failure.

Finally, a third aspect is the years of the Second World War : Melville's participation in the Resistance , but also experiencing the shame caused by defeat and occupation. This existential experience explains some of his recurring themes: secrecy, trust, betrayal - themes that also play an important role in his gangster films.

At the same time, these formative years are a key to understanding “masculinity” in his films. In quantitative terms alone, men always dominate him - and nowhere as exclusively as in Vier in the red circle . Melville himself said that by giving up women he would not have made the task easier. Regardless of this, according to Chris Fujiwara, Melville's love for a certain “idealized masculinity” perhaps found its most perfect expression in four in the red circle .

Ginette Vincendeau discovers nostalgia in the male protagonists of Melville on the one hand (the longing for a kind of "pre-war period" in which her code of honor was still in effect) and on the other hand melancholy, i.e. a broken masculinity. Although they lived self-sufficient , they would not become rich or happy, and Melville would not let them triumph as machos . Her masculinity would therefore not be glorified but critically questioned.

In addition to another personality trait of Melville's (although married, he described himself as lonely), the melancholy-tinged loneliness of his heroes is based on a second historical experience that he shared with quite a few of his contemporaries, especially intellectuals: existentialism .

Emergence

prehistory

Already 20 years before he realized Vier in the red circle , that is to say since 1950, Melville had the idea of making a heist movie . He was also supposed to be the director of Rififi , which contains a similarly long break-in scene in which no word is spoken. Half a year later he found out that Jules Dassin was to take his place , who made it a condition that Melville gave his consent, which he did.

Influences

In Four in the Red Circle , film critics discovered the influence of directors such as Sergio Leone , Howard Hawks , Louis Feuillade and Josef von Sternberg ; or one refers to specific films: in addition to Rififi, for example, to John Huston's asphalt jungle , Robert Wise 's Little Chances for Tomorrow , Henri Verneuil's The Sicilian Clan , Claude Lelouch's Le voyou and Yves Boisset's A Bull Sees Red .

Last but not least, you can also recognize Melville's own handwriting. That coincides with his self-statements. "I always make a little bit of the same film," he generally conceded, and with reference to four in the red circle , he said it was like an extract from all the thriller-like films he had made before.

occupation

Alain Delon had already played the lead role in Melville's The Ice Cold Angel three years earlier - and took over this part again in his last film, The Boss . Of the “four in the red circle”, however, Delon was the only preferred candidate who actually played the role that was intended for him. For the other three protagonists, Melville initially had other actors in mind: Lino Ventura as Mattei, Jean-Paul Belmondo as Vogel and Paul Meurisse as Jansen. Your engagement did not materialize for various reasons.

He described the collaboration with the actors, which Melville finally engaged, as follows: André Bourvil (Mattei) is not a typical “Melville”, but has added a little humanity to his role, which is as surprising as it is fitting; Yves Montand (Jansen) is - like himself and unlike Delon - a perfectionist, but extremely committed and, as someone of the same age, ideal as a "medium", which is why he hopes to make many films with him - in contrast to Gian Maria Volonté , in which he never felt he was working with a professional actor.

Filming

Melville named his “by far the most difficult film” in the red circle and apparently thought primarily of directing. The screenwriter Melville, who he was here as usual, made things anything but easy for the director Melville: Time and again while writing, he got to the point where he said to himself: “It will be difficult to film, but it will I shouldn't care, I want to do it. ”And in the end he implemented everything as he had written - with the restriction that the planned 50 days of shooting turned into 66.

Locations (selection)

  • Marseille -Blancarde: Mattei and Vogel board the night train to Paris.

  • Saint-Loup-de-Varennes : Corey is checked by the police for the first time.

  • La Rochepot : Vogel secretly gets into the trunk of Corey's car.

  • Paris , Place Vendôme : destination and crime scene of the trio - the noble jeweler.

  • Monthyon : place of the showdown, the fake jewelry handover.

Film music

In soundtrack used the film Eric Demarsan also jazz music ; Daniel Humair , Georges Arvanitas , Guy Pedersen , Bernard Lubat , Raymond Guiot and accordionist Joss Baselli were used in several titles . The jazz musician André Ekyan had a supporting role (Rico). The music was actually supposed to be composed by Michel Legrand ; he was then replaced by Demarsan during production.

synchronization

role actor Voice actor
Corey Alain Delon Christian Brückner
Mattei André Bourvil Helmo Kindermann
Jansen Yves Montand Arnold Marquis
bird Gian Maria Volonté Heinz Petruo

reception

After Melville had positioned himself as an outsider right from the start, he was initially given correspondingly low appreciation by the criticism. That only changed with the "classics" of his gangster films , of which four in the red circle is the fourth and penultimate. After his death Melville was rediscovered several times, in the 1990s mainly as a stylist, and a decade later as a moralist.

Roger Ebert and Hauke ​​Goos explain why Vier in the red circle goes far beyond an ordinary heist movie : Although the break-in is shown in minute detail, it is less about the act itself, “but about what comes after: about reliability and loyalty, about rules of honor and about the fact that distrust and loneliness in the end inevitably bring all the characters together - in that 'red circle' invented by Melville. "

Wolf Donner declares as his “pessimistic credo” that there is no “good and bad”, no “border between law and crime” at Melville. Ginette Vincendeau also picks up on this attribute, which is often attached to Melville, to point out a paradox: the more pessimistic his films became, the more their popularity rose. She explains it like this: Melville used the medium of film to express his pessimism, but the films did not appear pessimistic or depressing because the director's pleasure in filmmaking is communicated to the viewer and opposes a negative mood.

"With his gangster epic four in the red circle , Jean-Pierre Melville finally landed his white whale", Michael Sragow opens his accompanying essay to the Criterion Collection edition of Four in the red circle in 2003. Alluding to Moby Dick , the main work of Herman Melville , whose name the young Resistance fighter Jean-Pierre Grumbach took, he ennobled Melville's penultimate film as his masterpiece. Melville condensed all of his lifelong knowledge and 15 years of experience as a genre specialist; Although the theft of jewels does not seem as great as the hunt for the white whale, both works are equally about human hubris , strength and fallibility and thus about a genuine case of moral conflict.

Michael Sragow's high opinion of Four in the Red Circle is shared by not a few renowned fellow critics, such as Roger Ebert and Peter Bradshaw. Directors are also among the admirers of the film and its creators, including John Woo , Jean-Pierre Dardenne , Quentin Tarantino , Jim Jarmusch and Aki Kaurismäki .

Box office success

In France, the film ranked fifth in audience favor in 1970.

Awards

After the British Film Institute (bfi) restored and reworked the film in order to make it available in full length on DVD, Vier im Rote Kreis was shown at the Cannes Film Festival in 2002 and entered the festival's Hall of Fame, the so-called. 'Heritage Section' added.

Trivia

  • The color with which Corey draws a red circle on the tip of the cue is all the more noticeable because the chalk used for this is usually blue rather than red.
  • The variant of billiards played by Corey with three balls is carom . His basic rule that the cue ball has to hit the other two is reflected in the subsequent "collision" with the two henchmen of Ricos, as Corey deflects the first man's revolver pointed at him so that the shot hits the second.
  • When Corey passes the second police checkpoint, a green Ford Mustang is in the queue in front of him . It was Melville's private car, as its taste was very much based on American models (his famous Stetson was another example).
  • Mattei, who has apparently lost his wife (see photo on a table), lives alone with three cats. Melville, who was married, also had three cats.
  • The button on the security system that Jansen aims at from a distance of 20 meters bears the initials JPM. This can be related to the Mauboussin jeweler, but of course also to the author and director.

Editions (selection)

literature

  • Rui Nogueira: Le cinema selon Melville . Seghers, Paris 1973 (new edition: Éditions de l'Étoile, Paris 1996, ISBN 2-86642-176-0 )
    • German edition: Kino der Nacht. Conversations with Jean-Pierre Melville . Alexander-Verlag, Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-89581-075-4
  • Bernd Kiefer: [Article] Jean-Pierre Melville. In: Thomas Koebner (Ed.): Film directors. Biographies, descriptions of works, filmographies. 3rd, updated and expanded edition. Reclam, Stuttgart 2008 [1. Ed. 1999], ISBN 978-3-15-010662-4 , pp. 498-503 [with references].
  • Ginette Vincendeau: Jean-Pierre Melville: An American in Paris . British Film Institute , 2003. ISBN 978-0851709499
  • Bertrand Tessier: Jean-Pierre Melville, le solitaire . Editions Fayard, Paris, 2017. ISBN 978-2213705736

Web links

Commons : Le Cercle rouge  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Release certificate for four in the red circle . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry (PDF). Template: FSK / maintenance / type not set and Par. 1 longer than 4 characters
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g Wolf Donner : The Samurai of Paris . In: DIE ZEIT , October 1, 1971, accessed December 25, 2017.
  3. ↑ a b Michael Sragow : Le Cercle Rouge: Great Blasphemies . In: The Criterion Collection , April 12, 2011, accessed December 25, 2017.
  4. ^ A b c Roger Ebert : Le Cercle Rouge Review . May 23, 2003, accessed December 25, 2017.
  5. ↑ a b c d Chris Fujiwara : Le Cercle Rouge: What is the Red Circle? . In: The Criterion Collection , April 12, 2011 (English), August 25, 2003, accessed December 25, 2017.
  6. ^ A b Peter Bradshaw : Le Cercle Rouge . In: The Guardian , July 4, 2003, accessed December 25, 2017.
  7. ↑ a b c d Hauke ​​Goos : Alone in the red circle . In: DER SPIEGEL , August 25, 2003, accessed December 25, 2017.
  8. ↑ a b c d e f g Melville on Le Cercle Rouge . Excerpt from an interview with Melville (1971) by Rui Nogueira . In: The Criterion Collection , April 12, 2011, accessed December 25, 2017.
  9. ↑ a b c d e f g Ginette Vincendeau: Introduction to "Four in the Red Circle" . arthouse , 2012. (English with German subtitles)
  10. ^ John Woo : Honor, Loyalty, and Friendship . In: The Criterion Collection , April 11, 2011, accessed December 25, 2017.
  11. ^ David Meeker: Jazz on the Screen: A Jazz and Blues Filmography . Performing Arts Encyclopedia, Library of Congress.
  12. ↑ Synchronized files , accessed on November 27, 2017.
  13. ↑ Box Office in France 1970 , boxofficestory.com, March 23, 2017, accessed January 7, 2018.