Le Cercle Rouge Tribute Week: Out of Sight Moments From The Seventies (Delon On The Set)

Stills from the Criterion disc of Delon on the set of Le Cercle Rouge.

Le Cercle Rouge Tribute Week: Out of Sight Moments From The Seventies (Delon and Melville Interviewed on French TV)

Still from a 1971 interview with Melville and Delon discussing Le Cercle Rouge from the fantastic Criterion supplements.

Look at that stare on Delon. He looks like he could shatter glass with it!

Le Cercle Rouge Tribute Week: Super Fly Ultra Cool Men (Gian Maria Volonte Wallpapers)

Two more wallpapers from Le Cercle Rouge.

Le Cercle Rouge Tribute Week: Let's Get It On With Lobby Cards (Reissue Cards)

Color Lobby Cards For The Celebrated Re-release of Le Cercle Rouge.

Le Cercle Rouge Tribute Week: Pull Out That Crate Of Vintage Seventies Mags (French Pressbook)

Cover of the original French pressbook magazine for Le Cercle Rouge.

Le Cercle Rouge Tribute Week: Superstars of the Seventies (Alain Delon Wallpapers)

3 Wallpapers from Le Cercle Rouge featuring Alain Delon.

Le Cercle Rouge Tribute Week: Dynomite Posters of the Seventies (Two Japanese Prints)

Two more from the Criterion Collection edition of Le Cercle Rouge.

Le Cercle Rouge Tribute Week: Dynomite Posters of the Seventies (Various International designs)

From the fantastic double disc Criterion Collection of Le Cercle Rouge.

Le Cercle Rouge Tribute Week: Sounds of the Seventies (Eric Demarsan's Soundtrack)

I know the term ‘cool’ had been created long before Eric Demarsan stepped into a French studio in 1970 to score Jean-Pierre Melville’s masterful Le Cercle Rouge but everytime I watch the film or listen to the soundtrack album it feels like the word was invented for both.
Calculated, coolly seductive and chilling, just like the movie it was written for, Demarsan’s score is one of the best to ever grace a French film, a twenty-five song powerhouse of horn driven jazzy interludes and strangely unsettling vibraphone driven exercises of solitude.
Demarsan recalled to interviewer Stephane Lerouge in the liner notes to Universal’s essential French reissue that the music of Le Cercle Rouge was designed to “give you the feeling of being trapped” and was based on the “idea of fate.” With that thought, Demarsan goes a long way towards describing the sound of his most remarkable score.
Melville initially hired legendary Michel Legrand to score his epic crime film but after hearing Legrand’s initial compostitions he realized he had made a mistake and reconnected with Demarsan, the novice composer who had done such a shockingly good job on his 1969 film Army of Shadows.
Demarsan was born in France in October of 1938. Even though his father was immersed in the business world, Demarsan had some music in his background as his Grandmother was a painter who was interested in the piano. He began taking piano lessons just before his thirteenth year and instantly excelled at it and just over five years later was playing various Pariasian nightclubs with a popular Jazz quartette.
To help support himself and get closer to the cinema that he was falling more and more in love with, the budding composer began scoring French commercials in the early to mid sixties. This led to orchestration duties on some French television and in the mid sixties he scored a major assignment with iconic French composer François de Roubaix that would lead him to the attention of several directors, including Melville who would give him his first full composing job for a feature with the aforementioned Army of Shadows.
After Melville’s untimely death in 1973, Demarsan began working prolifically for a large variety of French and European filmmakers including Costa-Gavras and Jean-Pierre Mocky. He continues to be an in demand composer to this day in France, with his most recent credits alternating between features and the television work that he got his start in.
It can be argued that Demarsan peaked with his work for Melville, but that shouldn’t take away from what has been an extremely successful career. Perhaps the two were just made for each other and there simply wasn’t another filmmaker who could match the painterly like majesty of his scores like Melville could. Whatever the reason, Demarsan’s most influential work can be heard on Le Cercle Rouge, a real masterpiece of a record marked not only by expert compositions but also by the expert playing of the band Demarsan assembled (with special mention going to Bernard Lubat’s Vibraphone work).
Joining Demarsan in the Davout Studio in October of 1970 along with Lubat are Daniel Humair on percussion, Guy Pedersen on Bass, Georges Arvanitas on piano, Raymond Guiot on flute and Joss Baselli on the accordion. Together they create a rich sound that has gone onto to influence everyone from Roubaix himself to bands like Saint Etienne. The soundtrack, along with Roubaix’s score for Le Samourai, would have such an influence that in 2002 a group of musicians (including Saint Etienne, April March and Helena Noguerra) would record an entire album entitled Tribute to Alain Delon and Jean-Pierre Melville, that was fittingly not as good as the scores that inspired it.
The excellent remastered CD to Le Cercle Rouge is getting harder and harder to find but copies are still available online for those interested. A compilation, including some moments from the film is still in print and is more readily available but alas not as essential.
Demarsan admits in the CD booklet of Le Cercle Rouge that he was the only composer that Melville "ever worked with twice" and that he feels "a certain pride in having Melville" as his "first film director". It was a match made in heaven and both the film and soundtrack of Le Cercle Rouge are major masterpieces from two artists at the top of their game.

Le Cercle Rouge Tribute Week: Dynomite Posters of the Seventies

One of the many iconic poster designs for Melville's Le Cercle Rouge.

Le Cercle Rouge Tribute Week: That's Tight Man: Trailers from the Seventies

The original trailer for Melville's Le Cercle Rouge.

Blood From The Mummy's Tomb Tribute Week: Wallpapers #5 and #6

Blood From The Mummy's Tomb is available on DVD from Anchor Bay Entertainment. It includes a lovely widescreen print, a ten minute featurette and a nice selection of stills, tv spots and trailers.

Blood From The Mummy's Tomb Tribute Week: Wallpaper #4 and New York TImes Review

Blood From The Mummy's Tomb got a surprising supporter back in the summer of 1972 courtesy of The New York Times' Roger Greenspun. In his duel review of it and the superior Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde (which he didn't like as much) he had this to say about one of Hammer's most maligned productions:

"However, Seth Holt's "Blood From the Mummy's Tomb," which shares the bill with Dr. Jekyll and his sister, is for almost its entire length tremendous fun, skillful and wonderfully energetic. It is not so much a fiction movie as a stringing together of direful devices, but I can think of few more guiltily pleasant excuses for overstaying a lunch hour, avoiding duty, or merely escaping the sunshine on a summer afternoon.

Of course "Blood From the Mummy's Tomb" has a story, an uncommonly elaborate variation on the kind of revenge from beyond the grave that, from the nature of their discipline, Egyptologists keep running into. But it has so much more that I am inclined just to list a few attractions: a severed hand, a sacred cat, a jackal's skull, five mad scientists, an otherwise marvelously cracked or half-cracked cast, a fine respect for the horror heritage, a young hero named Tod Browning, and for a heroine a millenium's old free-floating astral spirit named Tera—who, as currently embodied in Miss Valerie Leon, is a 500 per cent knockout."

Blood From The Mummy's Tomb Tribute Week: Out of Sight Moments From The Seventies (Valerie Leon Promotes The Film)

Valerie Leon steps out with her little friend to promote Blood From The Mummy's Tomb before its release.

Blood From The Mummy's Tomb Tribute Week: Valerie Leon Wallpaper #3

Blood From The Mummy's Tomb: Wallpaper #3

Blood From The Mummy's Tomb Tribute Week: Valerie Leon Wallpaper #2

Blood From The Mummy's Tomb: Wallpaper #2

Blood From The Mummy's Tomb Tribute Week: Valerie Leon Wallpaper #1

Blood From The Mummy's Tomb: Wallpaper #1

Blood From The Mummy's Tomb Tribute Week: Dynomite Posters of the Seventies (US One Sheet)

Man, they don't make em like this anymore do they? Blood From The Mummy's Tomb had a lot of distinct promotional images, this is one of my favorites.

Blood From The Mummy's Tomb Tribute Week: Let's Get It On With Lobby Cards

I couldn't resist posting this one from Blood From The Mummy's Tomb just for the artist's inability to paint anyone that looks remotely like Valerie Leon.

Blood From The Mummy's Tomb Tribute Week: Peter Cushing and Valerie Leon Pop Art Styled Design

I made this print this morning and was quite happy with the way it came out. Hope it proves enjoyable for Blood From The Mummy's Tomb fans.