Le Cercle Rouge (French pronunciation: [lə sɛʁkl ʁuʒ]; "The Red Circle") is a 1970 French crime film written and directed by Jean-Pierre Melville. It stars Alain Delon, Bourvil, Gian Maria Volonté, François Périer and Yves Montand. The film is known for its climactic heist sequence which is about half an hour in length and has almost no dialogue.
The film's title refers to an epigraph which Melville made up, just as he did in Le Samouraï.
Gian Maria Volonté (9 April 1933 – 6 December 1994) was an Italian actor and activist. He is best known for his roles in four Spaghetti Western films: Ramón Rojo in Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars (1964), El Indio in Leone's For a Few Dollars More (1965), El Chuncho Munoz in Damiano Damiani's A Bullet for the General (1966) and Professor Brad Fletcher in Sergio Sollima's Face to Face (1967).
He had notable roles in high-profile social dramas depicting the political and social stirrings of Italian and European society in the 1960s and 1970s, including four films directed by Elio Petri – We Still Kill the Old Way (1967), Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (1970), The Working Class Goes to Heaven (1971), and Todo modo (1976). He is also recognized for his performances in Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Cercle Rouge (1970), Giuliano Montaldo's Sacco & Vanzetti (1971) and Giordano Bruno (1973), and Francesco Rosi's Christ Stopped at Eboli (1979).
Jean-Pierre Grumbach (20 October 1917 – 2 August 1973), known professionally as Jean-Pierre Melville (French: [ʒɑ̃ pjɛʁ mɛlvil]), was a French filmmaker. Considered a spiritual godfather of the French New Wave, he was one of the first fully-independent French filmmakers to achieve commercial and critical success. His works include the crime dramas Bob le flambeur (1956), Le Doulos (1962), Le Samouraï (1967), and Le Cercle Rouge (1970), and the war films Le Silence de la mer (1949) and Army of Shadows (1969).
Melville's subject matter and approach to film making was influenced by his service in the French Resistance during World War II, during which he adopted the nom de guerre (pseudonym) 'Melville' as a tribute to his favorite American author Herman Melville. He kept it as his stage name once the war was over.