#150: MELVILLE, Jean-Pierre: Bob Le Flambeur (1956)

MELVILLE, Jean-Pierre (France)

Bob Le Flambeur [1956]

Spine #150
DVD
OOP

Suffused with wry humor, Jean-Pierre Melville's Bob le Flambeur melds the toughness of American gangster films with Gallic sophistication to lay the roadmap for the French New Wave. As the neon is extinguished for another dawn, an aging gambler navigates the treacherous world of pimps, moneymen, and naïve associates while plotting one last score — the heist of the Deauville casino. This underworld comedy of manners possesses all the formal beauty, finesse, and treacherous allure of green baize.

102 minutes

Black & White

Monaural

in French

1:33:1 aspect ratio

Criterion Release 2002

Director/Writers

Screenplay by Jean-Pierre Melville and Auguste Le Breton, from an original story by Melville.

Dialogue by Le Breton.

Melville was 39 when he directed Bob le Flambeur.

Other Melville films in the Collection:

#755: La Silence De La Mer (1949)
#398: Les Enfants Terrible (1950)
#572: Léon Morin, Priest (1961)
#447: Le Doulos (1962)
#448: Le Deuxième Souffle (1966)
#306: Le Samouraï (1967)
#385: Army Of Shadows (1969)
#218: Le Cercle Rouge (1970)

The Film

Ah, what a peaceful-looking place by the sea. Why would the small-time aging ex-big-shot, Bob le Flambeur (high-roller) (Roger Duchesne) want to take on such a risky job as trying to knock it off for the 800 million francs in the safe?

A gambling addict — who surely would be in some kind of support group these days — plays from dusk to dawn. Even as the sun rises, he’s plopping a franc or two into the one-armed bandit he has installed in his own apartment.

He seems to get his kicks by tutoring a youngster, Paulo (Daniel Cauchy) in the ways of the underworld. When he falls hard for the gorgeous young Anne (15-year-old Isabelle Corey), his dignity will only permit him to give her to Paulo, who of course is unable to keep her.

My favorite scene is a late-night jazz vibe where we hear a vibraphone on the soundtrack. Bob enters the room and we see a guy actually playing the vibes! Clever!

One of the original heist films that has been copied to death. On a shoestring budget, over a long period of time because it was so hard for the independent Melville to raise money, he shot one of the great precursors of the Nouvelle Vague.

Film Rating (0-60):

54

The Extras

The Booklet

Twenty-page booklet featuring an essay by Luc Sante and Jean-Pierre Melville on Bob le Flambeur.

Sante:

“Melville was a classicist. Bob may be the most elegantly rigorous movie ever made about a cockeyed heist. It is also one of the most elegiac, with a twilight mood about it. Bob, as courtly and dignified as any all-night gambler ever was but willing to risk his serenity for one last big score, is in Melville’s view a relic of a bygone, pre-war world, when crooks had an independence and integrity not unlike Melville’s own. (The milieu lost much of its charm as a consequence of its collaboration with the German invaders.) Duchesne, who inhabits the role of Bob with equal measures panache and pathos, was in fact a survivor of that Edenic era.”

Melville:

“Bob cost 17,500,000 francs, whereas the average film at that time cost 180,000,000. It was a very profitable film for me, because it did very well … I often say — which isn’t true — that I have always been rejected by the profession. I always had offers to make films that I always turned down. I’ve never been forced into unemployment. I’ve been impossible to deal with, there’s no doubt about that, and I’ve quarreled with all the producers.”

Commentary

None.

Video interview

With actor Cauchy.

He has some nice and some nasty remembrances of Melville. A nice piece.

Radio interview

With Melville.

With Gideon Bachmann. Melville rightly points out how many great American pictures were made before the war versus European or Asian. He’s right, but duh … in the 50’s and 60’s, the balance shifted the other way.

Theatrical trailer

An actual French “Coming Attractions” trailer!

Extras Rating (0-40):

35

54 + 35 =

89

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