The brand-new AFI Silver Theatre was still shaking down some technical problems at Sunday's screening of Le cercle rouge (1970). A projection lamp was blown, and the film wasn't quite perfectly framed on the screen.

Ice-blue-eyed Commissaire Mattei tracks escaped prisoner Vogel to Paris, where Vogel joins Corey on a jewel heist—that is, when Mattei isn't home feeding his three cats. The thieves bring sharpshooter Jansen (Yves Montand) out of alcoholic retirement; Montand's is the face of edgy apprehension. If the movie's ending is unsatisfactory (a reiterated aperçu from the Internal Affairs chief), it's still a good ride.

Film is about details, and writer-director Jean-Pierre Melville cares about them: a pool cue tip, a safety pin unbent to pick open a pair of handcuffs, a memorial sign commemorating Niepce's contribution to photography.

In a tribute to Jules Dassin's Rififi, the burglary takes place in near silence, with not even much music on the soundtrack. Reviewing the surveillance tapes the next day, Mattei quips, "They're not much good for talk, are they?" There's a fabulous moment when Mattei walks into Santi's club; Melville quickly cuts to the faces of several men in the club (maybe a half-second each) to let us know, again wordlessly, that Mattei has been made as a cop by them.

The bit where Jansen is going through the D.T.'s, his body crawling with real rats and huge good-looking puppet spiders, brings hard-boiled film into the color era.

How do you say "Put him on ice" in French cop-speaK? "Au frigidaire."

posted: 9:46:28 PM