The French thriller that shaped Michael Mann’s ‘Heat’
“Good artists copy, great artists steal” is a sentiment that has been attached to the work of many great filmmakers over the years.
Filmmaking has always been a business of classy thievery, with directors exempt from the usual punishments of intellectual property theft by passing off each similar idea as simply ‘taking inspiration’. Whether it be the inspiration that Quentin Tarantino takes from great westerns and exploitation films to Damien Chazelle and the uncanny resemblance between films like La La Land and Umbrellas of Cherbourg, it’s all just “paying tribute”.
Most of the time, this leads to films that become hugely successful, even if few people know the largely obscure source story that the hit film followed. This happens to be the case for one of the most successful heist movies of all time, with one French film from the 1970s putting a huge stamp on the picture and perhaps ensuring its popularity.
The French New Wave movement is one of the most respected and highly regarded in the whole of cinema, with everyone from Richard Linklater to Martin Scorsese and Greta Gerwig discussing the colossal impact of an era in which filmmaking exploded into an entirely new form. Editing became quicker, stories became more ambiguous and evasive, and structure took on a life of its own as it morphed before your eyes.
Directors like Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut and Agnès Varda became icons of this movement, with groundbreaking films that are viewed reverentially by modern filmmakers who try but rarely come close to their levels of innovation. Another name hugely popular within the movement, Jean-Pierre Melville was considered a sort of ‘spiritual father’ of the era through the equal commercial and critical success of his films that expanded the movement to mainstream audiences. Le Samouraï is arguably his most well-known film, with the story following a contract killer with samurai instincts who finds himself caught between a police investigator and a ruthless employer.
How Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Cercle Rouge shaped Michael Mann’s Heat
In the vein of being inspired, one Melville film proved to be the basis for Michael Mann’s 1995 film Heat, with Le Cercle Rouge becoming an almost direct influence for the plot of his most beloved crime thriller. Directed in 1970, the film follows a French criminal called Corey, played by Alain Delon, who is released from prison and vows never to return. But he is soon dragged back into the criminal underworld, working for a murderer called Vogel, coming up with an elaborate plan for a heist. Despite working with the best criminals, police detective Mattei is also searching for him and is determined to put him behind bars.
The plot uncannily mirrors Heat, with Mann’s version of this story becoming a staple within the careers of Val Kilmer, Robert De Niro and Al Pacino. However, both are distinctly different in their approach to violence, with Mann leaning more American and maximalist in terms of the explosions and car chases, with endless moments of rapid gunfire that come across as overkill compared to Melville’s more restrained (and dare I say tasteful) approach.
The moments of violence in Melville’s films are always tied to character development and mark a precise moment of demise, with very real consequences being delivered with each bullet fired. With little dialogue being spoken, the actions are more deliberate and thoughtful. However, in Heat, there is a more haphazard approach as the characters are almost desensitised to the violence they are perpetrating. Death and pain have seemingly lost all meaning, with the criminals acting as though they have everything and nothing to lose.
While the film is still enjoyed by many audiences today, perhaps few know its true origins and how its roots lie in the French New Wave movement. When comparing the two, you could even go so far as to say that Melville is more successful in his ‘take’ on the story, with a more intellectual approach to the consequences of violence and how this informs character. On the other hand, Mann’s version is a little more about the action and the thrill of being in the thick of it.
