Jean-Pierre Melville's L'Armée des ombres | Army of Shadows (1969)

L'Armée des ombres is quite faithfully adapted from Joseph Kessel's book of the same name, and is a particular (and in some respects documentary) account of France during the Résistance. Melville was particularly pleased with the opening minute of the film, during which traffic was stopped, and in which we see an army march through L'Étoile (or the very famous Arc de Triomphe) and into the Champs-Élysées, finally revealing themselves as the occupying Nazi army. This sets the tone for the whole of the movie, and that tone is bleak.

It is pointless to regurgitate the story of this film, which many others have already done. It is enough to say that it recounts the Résistance not from a heroic angle but more from a psychological point of view: we see, for instance, the engineer Philippe Gerbier (Lino Ventura) as an escapee from a French hotel run by the Nazis (after spending a few nights in a Vichy concentration camp), and his face registers his reactions very subtly. This is not a dog-eat-dog world, but one in which not only informants of the members of the Résistance have to be killed by the Résistants, but any members of the Résistance who are at first captured by the Nazis and then freed have to be killed by their own friends: they are a danger to the Résistance cell because there are inevitably very few Jean Moulins: they will break down under torture. Particularly tragic is the necessary assassination of Mathilde (Simone Signoret), who has saved the lives of so many people, including some responsible for her own death: Lucie Aubrac is one of the models.

Jean-Pierre Melville's Les Enfants Terribles (1969)

Les Enfants Terribles is a very faithful filmic adaptation of Jean Cocteau's 1929 novel of the same name, and Cocteau worked in very close collaboration with Melville, providing the dream-like voiceover. There are very strong intimations of incest and homosexuality in the film, although nothing specific.

Paul becomes ill due to fellow pupil Dargelos (Renée Cosima) throwing a snowball at him, although he doesn't denounce him, it is evident that Dargelos¹ holds some homoerotic power over him. After the death of their mother, the adolescent brother and sister Paul (Édouard Dermit)² and Élisabeth (Nicole Stéphane) live together in intimate isolation, developing a kind of secret language. They are reluctant to shed their youth.

Although Élisabeth marries the rich Michaël, there is no consummation as he dies the next day. Along with his money, Élisabeth inherits a large hôtel particulier and Paul goes to live with her. They are joined by Paul's friend Gérard and Élisabeth's friend Agathe, who loks very much like Dargelos, so much in fact that Paul comes to fall in love with her, and vice versa. This is the beginning of the real problems, and the film has something of a Greek tragedy about it.

It's easy to see why the novel appealed to Melville: his second film has many of the ingredients of the néo-noir works he become so popular for later, such as friendhship, loyalty and betrayal, etc.

¹ In Cocteau's Le Livre Blanc (1930) he reveals that Dargelos is based on a real person who had a great effect on him.

² Dermit was Cocteau's ideal in physical beauty, whom he nicknamed 'Doudou', and who also played in Cocteau's films from L'Aigle à deux têtes (1948) to Le Testament d'Orphée (1960). He lived with Cocteau, became his heir, and is buried with him in the Chapelle Saint-Blaise-des-Simples in Milly-la-Forêt.

Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Doulos (1969)

 

This film was made in 1969, although the word 'doulos' doesn't appear in a modern edition of Le Petit Robert because the word is old-fashioned slang for 'indic', or 'indicateur', meaning 'nark', or to be more up-to-date: 'grass' (as in informant). In Jean-Pierre Melville's world anyone can be a grass and people (well, men, usually) have to tread carefully. Oddly, Maurice Faugel (Serge Reggiani) treads very carefully when entering the house of Gilbert Varove (René Lefèvre) and even wipes his shoes on the mat. What's odd about that is that Maurice will then shoot Gilbert dead after Gilbert (his friend, supposedly) has lent him the gun to use (but not hurt anyone) in a forthcoming robbery.

Maurice will believe that Silien (Jean-Paul Belmondo) is his friend until proved otherwise, but then when a robbery is interrupted by Inspector Salignari (Daniel Crohem), a friend of Silien's, and when Maurice's accomplice Rémy (Philippe Nahon) is killed and Maurice himself wounded (after killing Salignari) it becomes clear that Silien is in fact a grass. Or not.

This film is a convoluted mystery trip in which nothing will be revealed to the viewer until the last twenty minutes or so, and it's therefore no surprise that this is one of Quentin Tarentino's favourite films, particularly in regard to Reservoir Dogs. OK, this is néo-noir Melville again, but this film is not only an honour to the genre, but a profound work concerning the value of friendship, the value of money, conflict of interests, the nature of trust, outsiders, greed, desire, even the wish to have done with the lot and live in peace for the rest of your life.  Just watch your back.

Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Cercle rouge | The Red Circle (1970)

Old photos play a part in Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Cercle rouge. Take the photos Corey (Alain Delon) has of his former girlfriend. Initially Corey intended to leave the photos behind on the prison desk as he departs with his possessions, although a guard gives the photos back to him. Which in fact is a good thing as it happens, as Corey can leave them in the empty safe of his former boss Rico (André Ekyan): as Corey takes the now slightly less rich Rico's money the photographic symbolism is telling: Corey's just exchanged one thing for another. We'll later see a final view of her when Corey re-visits the cobwebbed flat he's not seen since he was sent to prison, and he throws the photo of her in the bin. The girl remains nameless and about the only sight we see of her is her naked body in the bedroom of Rico's flat. Later, we'll see a very different angle on the memories of a couple, when there's a brief shot of a framed photo of the presumably dead wife of the cop Mattei (André Bourvil) on his desk at home; Mattei also shows the reluctant grass Santi (François Périer) a photo of Santi and Vogel together, proving that they do know each other. Significantly, close to the spot where Corey is to meet his future friend in crime Vogel (Gian Maria Volonté), we get a full shot of the huge wall at Saint-Loup-de-Varennes near Chalon-sur-Saône, which annouces where Nicéphore Niépce invented photography in 1822.

Just released from prison in Marseille, Corey collects money from Rico and buys a second-hand car – an American model, of course – and picks up an anauthorised traveller in this boot in Bourgogne, Vogel, who's just jumped from the train to Paris where he has escaped from the handcuffs Mattei tied him to in the sleeping compartment. The main thing is that this coincidence – two crooks by chance in the same car – brings them together.

Before buying the car Corey initially plays billiards by himself to while the time away until the showroom opens, his chalking of the cue tip designing a red circle, and the title of the film alludes to a quotation by Rama Krishna shown at the beginning of the film, about people being drawn together in this circle, even if they come from different paths, even if they have different aims. The third member of the 'circle' is to be Jansen (Yves Montand), a retired élite cop now suffering from the DTs: no one is innocent, as Mattei's boss repeatedly says.

The climax of the story is in a very long, almost silent, psychologically gripping heist in which the extraordinary skills of the three crooks are tested to their utmost when they rob a high-class jewellery store: Jansen has overcome his alcoholism, is making high-spec bullets from moulds, has even practiced his rifle accuracy to open an electronic door, and when the job is accomplished he feels redeemed, he isn't even interested in his cut. The absurdity of the situation – that the jewellery robbery of the century means that no receiver will touch such highly expensive booty is of no importance: it's the psychology, the craftsmanship, that matters.

This is néo-noir, this is about fatality, and everyone knows that the three robbers will be brought dead together in a pool of blood, much like the red circle that brought them together. For that matter, just as photos bring people together, even if they're separated from each other. A superb film.