Le Cercle rouge
Where the DNA of Le Cercle rouge travels
Films it shaped
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The influence of John Woo's The Killer is there, in the way they're shot, the camera's often quite high and swooping.
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I am a big fan of Melville. There is an an existential nature to his films and a specific kind of characterization. It’s hard to say what influence is, but I think the professionalism in Le Samourai has influenced me in all my work, including Heat. I think it’s about that level of dedication, the almost monastic life of the professional.
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I have always been inspired by Melville. Le Cercle Rouge taught me how to build tension without dialogue, through the meticulous actions of the characters. This was very important for films like Oldboy.
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I really love French crime films, especially Jean-Pierre Melville. Films like Le Samouraï and Le Cercle rouge are absolute masterpieces in terms of their precision, their procedural aspects, and the silent professionalism of the characters. We definitely looked at those for the heist sequences in Baby Driver.
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Drive Atlas note
Nicolas Winding Refn crafted Drive as an intoxicating, neon-drenched fairy tale, but its stoic soul belongs entirely to the French cinematic tradition of the ultra-cool, ascetic criminal. Refn and star Ryan Gosling obsessively studied Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Samouraï, borrowing Alain Delon's deadpan silence and the mythological code of an underworld phantom who speaks only when absolutely necessary. The film's deliberate, hypnotic pacing and fascination with solitary men navigating fatalistic systems is further reinforced by Melville's Le Cercle Rouge. By bathing the clinical detachment of the French New Wave era in a synth-pop, Los Angeles glow, Refn orchestrated a mesmerizing explosion of romantic brutality.
