movies (subject to tumblr's inconsistent search engine. for more complete results, try the archive): badlands, blow out, bring me the head of alfredo garcia, cadavres exquis, charley varrick, chinatown, dog day afternoon, il conformista, klute, le cercle rouge, marathon man, mean streets, night moves, point blank, prime cut, save the tiger, serpico, sisters, straight time, the day of the jackal, the don is dead, the driver, the friends of eddie coyle, the getaway, the harder they come, the hot rock, the killing of a chinese bookie, the last of sheila, the long goodbye, the mackintosh man, the onion field, the organization, the parallax view, the spook who sat by the door, the sting, the taking of pelham one two three, the yakuza, three days of the condor, villain, wanda
“I don’t want to situate my heroes in time; I don’t want the action of a film to be recognizable as something that happens in 1968. That’s why in Le Samouraï, for example, the women aren’t wearing miniskirts, while the men are wearing hats—something, unfortunately, that no one does anymore. I’m not interested in realism.
All my films hinge on the fantastic. I’m not a documentarian; a film is first and foremost a dream, and it’s absurd to copy life in an attempt to produce an exact re-creation of it. Transposition is more or less a reflex with me: I move from realism to fantasy without the spectator ever noticing.”
-Jean-Pierre Melville (via)
“When Corey and Vogel first meet, Vogel has a gun but Corey has the Gauloises. They both light up and stare into the other’s narrowing eyes. Initially, they look like gunslingers waiting for sundown but mid-smoke they stop watching each other and start watching their backs like partisans.”
In his 1970 American-influenced film policier, director Jean-Pierre Melville (Le Samourai) pulls the term “the red circle” from an imagined Buddhist quote. The quote (“When men, even unknowingly, are to meet one day, whatever may befall each, whatever the diverging paths, on the said day, they will inevitably come together in the red circle.”) describes the predestined meeting and demise of Le Cercle Rouge’s felonious masterminds Corey and Vogel—played respectively by Alain Delon and Gian Maria Volonte.
According to Baltimore police lore, “red ball” is slang for a high-profile criminal case, which fittingly describes the attention Corey and Vogel receive while on the lam. Corey has just ripped off his former employer, a mob boss. Vogel recently escaped from his police escort by jumping out the window of a moving train. Despite being the subject of both cop and mafia manhunts, the two decide to collaborate with a former police sharpshooter to pull off a jewel heist. 
The robbery goes beautifully—choreography in ski masks. Lacking the flashier pyrotechnics of those found in films like Ocean’s Eleven (which is said to have borrowed elements of Le Cercle Rouge), instead we are awed by the grace and patience of the thieves. And ironically, the heist offers the disgraced marksman Jansen (Yves Montand) a chance to redeem himself and escape the delirium tremens that have haunted him. 
Corey and Vogel don’t fair as well when Captain Mattai (Andre Bourvil) catches up with the outlaw duo as they try pass off the jewelry to a fence. Melville uses his red circle symbolism, once again in the form of a pool game, to foreshadow the inevitable conclusion of the film.
“Gliding almost without speech down the dawn streets of a wet Paris winter, these men in trench coats and fedoras perform a ballet of crime, hoping to win and fearing to die. Some are cops and some are robbers. To smoke for them is as natural as breathing. They use guns, lies, clout, greed and nerve with the skill of a magician who no longer even thinks about the cards. They share a code of honor which is not about what side of the law they are on, but about how a man must behave to win the respect of those few others who understand the code.”
“When men, even unknowingly, are to meet one day, whatever may befall each, whatever the diverging paths, on the said day, they will inevitably come together in the red circle.”
