red Circle

If you like intelligent crime films, then Le Cercle Rouge (the Red Circle) is for you. If you have seen it in the US before you may want to take another look. While prior US prints were 90 minutes long, the Criterion Collection DVD restores the film to its original 140 minutes. As in most cases, cutting the film cuts out its heart. This movie is about long, slow understated scenes. One of the first scenes introduces a police officer taking a criminal via train from Marseilles to Paris. By taking it slow, we see the tedium for the officer and the slow and deliberate attempt to escape. The director is perfectly happy to let five minutes go by without any dialogue. American crime movie directors would feel compelled to fill in the space with a voice over. The director is assisted by able actors who convey quite a bit in gestures and expressions.

Like many of the other great crime films, cops and criminals are presented in a symbiotic relationship in a world that appears to exclude civilians. They are the only people with more than a line or two. They all know each other by some means or another and take advantage of each other where they can. As it understates nearly everything, it doesn't make a point of this, except when the senior police officer notes that "no one is innocent, everyone is guilty."