Ball, Biscuit & Burgundy
In the first half of 2003, the formidable New York art cinema house, Film Forum, held an extended run of a newly restored 1970 film written and directed by Jean-Pierre Melville called “Le Cercle Rouge,” starring Alain Delon, Gina Maria Volonté, and Yves Montand. By the time I got around to heading across town to see it, it was spring, a Sunday as I recall. That was the weekend of Sakura Matsuri (Cherry Blossom Festival) at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, one of the most soul-soothing spring exercises a New Yorker can experience in a public space, and I headed immediately to Brooklyn after catching the first showing of Melville’s film.
That morning I had also bought the White Stripes album, “Elephant,” which had just been released that week. Once I had procured a beer and found a spot on the grass at BBG, I pulled out my portable CD player and listened to the album for the first time. When I reached track eight, “Ball & Biscuit,” it became clear to me that Jack & Meg White had completed the circle, as it were. As Jack White’s guitar lines grew more and more concentrated and economical, more frantically step-hopping but absolutely essential I realized that the band had achieved in music what Melville had achieved in film: a work dressed in stylized artifice that nevertheless radiates an undeniable aura of artistic achievement and knowing sophistication, and does so effortlessly.
Melville’s picture plays today and tomorrow at Film Forum as part of the its “French Crime Wave” series. Apart from its legendary heist scene, which I have referenced before, there is an another definitive scene that takes place in the French countryside, in Burgundy as I recall. It involves the two principal characters, Corey (played by Delon) and Vogel (played by Volonté), and at one point, for almost two minutes no words are spoken, only a pack of cigarettes and a lighter are exchanged, and the whole scene is tightly wound, beautifully shot, and undeniably cool.
The only reason I feel cool is that I remember that it was shot in Burgundy (which I hope tomorrow’s viewing confirms).