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Jean-Pierre Melville in 4K? That’s an inviting idea. All of Melville crime pictures are memorable, and this is one of his best-remembered, a traditional caper drama with a wordless heist scene that lasts almost half an hour. The color production stars three big French actors and one Italian. Alain Delon and Gian Maria Volonté are the career thieves, joined by the conflicted Yves Montand as an alcoholic ex-cop. Comedian Bourvil is enlisted in a surprise role as the completely serious and less-than-ethical police inspector on their trail. We have to admire producer-writer-director Melville’s skill — he achieves a high-budget sheen with a minimum of production resources.

Le cercle rouge

4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 218

1970 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 140 min. / The Red Circle / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date March 15, 2022 / 49.95

Starring: Alain Delon, Bourvil, Gian Maria Volonté, Yves Montand, Francois Périer, Ana Douking, Paul Crauchet, Paul Amiot, Pierre Collet,...

It’s French! It’s hot! Jacques Deray’s most unusual film is an intimate, minimalist murder story that digs deep into the affairs of four very superficial people. Among the wealthy set are four pleasure seekers with a laissez faire take on relationships, that think they’re above basic drives — jealousy, possessiveness, resentment. The movie also makes book on the fame & notoriety of the off-on show biz couple Romy Schneider and Alain Delon — the film’s opening seems to celebrate their bigger-than-life glamour and beauty. A notable extra is a 2019 documentary with Delon and his co-star Jane Birkin, plus the film’s famous writers.

La piscine

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 1088

1969 / Color / 1:66 widescreen / 122 min. / Available at The Criterion Collection / Street Date July 20, 2021 / 39.95

Starring: Alain Delon, Romy Schneider, Maurice Ronet, Jane Birkin, Paul Crauchet, Suzie Jaspard.

Cinematography: Jean-Jacques Tarbès

Production Designer: Paul Laffargue

Film Editor: Paul Cayatte

Original Music: Michel Legrand

Written by Jean-Claude Carriìre,...

Jean-Pierre Melville’s most accomplished, most personal movie gets a new reissue. Ignored in 1969 and released in the United States only 37 years later, this somber, ultra-realistic look at the French resistance has never been equalled. Forget thrilling adventure tales with daring escapes, patriotic oaths and beautiful spies; Melville presents resistance activities in the Occupied territory as a fearful grind leading in one direction only. Criterion’s extras include an interview piece with historical operatives, who still argue points of strategy.

Army of Shadows

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 385

1969 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 145 min. / L’Armée des ombres / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date April 7, 2020 / 39.95

Starring: Lino Ventura, Paul Meurisse, Jean-Pierre Cassel, Simone Signoret, Claude Mann, Paul Crauchet, Christian Barbier, Serge Reggiani, André Dewavrin.

Cinematography: Pierre Lhomme, Walter Wottitz

Film Editor: Françoise Bonnot

Original Music: Eric De Marsan

Written by Jean-Pierre Melville from the novel by Joseph Kessel

Produced by Jacques Dorfmann

Directed...

Maurice Pialat’s La maison des bois, playing in New York this weekend at the Museum of the Moving Image's retrospective on the director, consists of seven episodes each about an hour long. The series follows Hervé (Hervé Levy), a young boy living in a “house in the woods” with foster parents Albert (Pierre Doris) and Jeanne (Jacqueline Dufranne), and is set during WWII. Hervé hangs out, gets into trouble, goes to school. His father (Paul Crauchet) is in the army; his mother left them before the film’s events. The story overlaps in many ways with Pialat’s previous film, L’enfance nue, to the point where it’s easy to assume that Pialat was tapping the same autobiographical well for both projects. Maison, however, is looser and more expansive than usual for Pialat, and consequently more direct about his concerns. While there’s a great deal of detail in any Pialat work,...

Catherine Deneuve: Style, beauty, and talent on TCM tonight A day to rejoice on Turner Classic Movies: Catherine Deneuve, one of the few true Living Film Legends, is TCM’s "Summer Under the Stars" star today, August 12, 2013. Catherine Deneuve is not only one of the most beautiful film actresses ever, she’s also one of the very best. In fact, the more mature her looks, the more fascinating she has become. Though, admittedly, Deneuve has always been great to look at, and she has been a mesmerizing screen presence since at least the early ’80s. ‘The Umbrellas of Cherbourg’: One of the greatest movie musicals ever Right now, TCM is showing one of the greatest movie musicals ever made, Jacques Demy’s Palme d’Or winner The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964), in which a very blonde, very young, very pretty, and very dubbed Catherine Deneuve (singing voice by Danielle Licari...

Un Flic: Jean-Pierre Melville’s ‘late noir classic’ (photo: Alain Delon in Un Flic) Jean-Pierre Melville’s last film, Un Flic / A Cop (1972), is a late noir classic that features all the central trappings of the genre along with — what was then — a modern sensibility about the nature of who, ostensibly, are supposed to be the good guys. Perhaps it goes without saying they’re not much different than the bad guys; even so, as is the case in many Melville films, good guys and bad guys are mirrors of each other, the same yet different. Add to that several daring high-stakes criminal enterprises and, of course, a femme fatale (played beautifully by the beautiful Catherine Deneuve), and you’ve got a film that, while not the masterpiece of Melville’s canon, would have been so for most other filmmakers. Despite its title, Un Flic is as much about a very cool criminal,...

Many might find L'armée des ombres extremely boring. In fact, for a film about the French resistance against Nazi occupation during WWII (1939-1945), the film pratically doesn't have any action scenes. However, if you're patient enough, you'll appreciate L'armée des ombres (which is adapted from a novel of Joseph Kessel) that explores the bottom of the leading protagonists' heart.

Philippe Gerbier (Lino Ventura), an engineer and a suspected resistant, is put behind bars by the French police. Afterwards, he's handed to the Gestapo's headquarters in Paris because he knows a lot of things. Philippe manages to escape and flee to Marseille in order to meet with fellow resistants. Moreover, he'll eliminate the traitor who caused his imprisonment. However, the Gestapo will try to not only arrest Philippe, but also his companions.

Let's be honest: the pace of Jean-Pierre Melville's film is really slow from the beginning to the end.