Is Jean-Pierre Melville as good as Hitchcock?

I've felt at times when I revisit a Hitchcock film that he's a bit overrated - is North by Northwest really that good, by today's faster-paced standards? - and I'm starting to feel, watching two Jean-Pierre Melville films on back-to-back nights, that he's under-rated, or at least under-recognized: Surely Melvilles 1970 "Le Cercle Rouge" is as good a jewel-thief movie as you're going to get - not perfect by any means, but smartly told and acted, well paced, and clear about the multiple strands of the plot. I have some quibbles that I'll get to in a moment, but first of all I was struck, in Cercle, as I was the night before in Bob le Flambeur, by the great use of location shots - in this movie, some in Marseilles, many in Paris, beautifully capturing the look and feel of the neighborhoods, with the old Hotels and apartments in some "quartiers" and the trashy shops and clubs and bars in some of the other - and also great outdoor footage - the chase through the snow, the shooting in muddy field. And: the escape from the moving train, perfectly choreographed and surprising. All that said, the plot turns out not to be as challenging or imaginative as it seemed at first: what happened to the whole element of a prison guard setting a prisoner up for the great robbery? I thought there would be a huge payoff there, like it's all a trap or like the police inspector is in on it - but that was just dropped. And how can anyone explain the ending? What leads the jewel thief to the final location? How did he know it was a trap? How did he get there? lots of unanswered details at the end - but, still, a really entertaining movie that doesn't feel dated at all, except for the 1960s-era Plymouth barreling along the highway.