Alain Delon is not real

Image from google images.

I saw “Le Samouraï” this spring and it didn’t take long for me to fall in love with the film’s star, the gorgeous and talented French actor, Alain Delon. Cool and collected, Delon epitomized the likable lawbreaker character copied so often in films today. Despite director, Jean-Pierre Melville’s misogynist tendencies, I find Delon’s work in “Le Cercle Rouge” and “Le Samouraï” irresistible.

Both films are devoid of delicate sensitivity and missing the trappings one would associate essential to any crime drama. For example, I could probably count the gunshots in each film on both hands. “Le Cercle Rouge,” which I watched yesterday for the first time, is especially striking because it manages to do something profound while still standing as a typical heist film.

At the heart of this film are the characters. Delon is Corey, the cold and removed mastermind of the heist. He and murderer Vogel, played by Gian Maria Volonte, team up with an alcoholic sharpshooter to rob an upscale jewelry store in intricate fashion. Think 2001′s “Ocean’s Eleven” without the fancy technology. But “Le Cercle Rouge” does exactly what “Ocean’s Eleven” doesn’t in its final heist scene. Instead of George Clooney and Brad Pitt exchanging jokes with the other robbers in the Vegas vault, we have the three Frenchmen acting out the job in absolute silence. The characters, at this point in the film, are not collections of emotional baggage or attached to each other as friends — in “Le Cercle Rouge,” everyone has their own motive and barely exists out of the job they are assigned.

If you’ve ever thought about turning to a life of crime, this is a film that could inspire you to actually burst into the nearest bank with guns and burlap sacks. From the slick camera angles to the criminals’ attire, everything about their world is seductive. Quite a contrast to the weak police chief who is seen on multiple occasions baby talking his fluffy pet cats.

Don’t expect any overarching message of morality to outweigh the attraction of the criminal underworld. While a message of guilt comes in to play, it’s small in weight compared to the film’s focus. That said, do yourself a favor this weekend. Turn away from that new Ben Stiller comedy or “Across the Universe” and rent some delicious Melville classics. If it means anything, I’ll definitely think you’re a cooler person for checking one out.

Cruel Intentions – circa 1945

It’s likely that few people my age will recognize names like Antonioni, Bresson, Bergman, and Lang. In a similar vein, I can’t tell you anything about pro sports or “Grey’s Anatomy,” but I think there’s always a little bit of classic film in even the most typical blockbusters today. That’s not to say I think everyone should sit down with friends and a bowl of popcorn on a Friday night to watch “The Seventh Seal,” but it’s definitely interesting — once you’ve seen so many of these classics — to see how obviously hit movies today have borrowed from their predecessors.

Take 1999′s “Cruel Intentions.” I’m willing to bet a strikingly higher percentage of people have seen this than any Bresson I could list. Probably one of the least viewed films by the French director is “Les Dames de Bois de Boulogne” which, around ten minutes in, already made me wonder if “Cruel Intentions” director, Roger Kumble studied it in film school.

But it isn’t just the story in the American teen drama that strikes similarities. To its credit, “Cruel Intentions” is based on the 1782 novel “Les Liaisons dangereuses” by Choderlos de Laclos, also French! Yet, while the age old story of seductions plays a title role in each film, it was mostly the tones, lightings, and character appearances in the films that made me draw these two films so closely together.

Check out photos of Sarah Michelle Gellar’s character versus Hélène in “Les Dames.” Their pale skin and dark hair do wonders to play up the characters’ wicked queen persona. If you watch both films, the faux-motherly moves each makes towards taking in other girls for their supposed betterment is also very similar.

But I think, despite all this, the convention of the melodrama has certainly changed over the years. While “Cruel Intentions” brought widespread attention due to its scandalous plot and hot sex scenes with attractive “Tiger Beat” pin-ups, I doubt “Les Dames” got similar attention during its heyday. Sure, the novelette written by Diderot upon which the film is based might have stirred up some enlightened criticism, but the movie doesn’t break down any controversial walls here.

Aside from showing Bresson’s early attentiveness to the minimal and dark nature of humans, “Les Dames” probably doesn’t do a whole lot for classic film nerds like me. But, to be honest, the only thing I could remember about “Cruel Intentions” before looking on IMDb.com was “Colorblind” by the Counting Crows and how, when I watched the movie with a friend back in middle school, we had to turn the volume down low because it “had dirty scenes.”