Bob le flambeur
Tags: cult, humor, murder, atmospheric

Plot synopsis:
Bob, a middle-aged gambler and ex-con living in the Montmartre district of Paris, experiences a run of bad luck that leaves him nearly broke. Bob is a gentleman with scruples, well liked in the demi-monde community. He has unsuccessfully tried to rob a bank in the past, and has spent time in prison.
He hears through a croupier friend that the Deauville Casino holds undreamed-of quantities of cash, vulnerable in the early morning hours. Bob develops a complicated scheme to steal it, bringing in a tough but naive young protégé and an ace safecracker into his scheme, along with a few other underworld characters.
Bob also becomes involved with a young woman, Anne, who does not have her own place and stays with any man who can take her off the streets. Later, Anne begins spending time with Bob's friend and partner-in-crime, Paolo.
Meanwhile, Paolo trusts Anne and tells her the plot in which he is involved with Bob. However, in the evening of the planned heist, Anne betrays the gang to a pimp turned informant, Marc, without realizing that it was supposed to be a secret. Marc tips the possibility of a scheme masterminded by Bob to Inspector Ledru of the local police, whom Bob once saved from death. However, Marc is gunned down by Paulo just as he is about to confirm the specifics.
Ledru searches Bob's Montmartre haunts to warn him off the plan – in vain. At the casino, Bob fails to connect with his inside man, a croupier who has spilled the plan with his wife, who's also tipped off Ledru. An hours-long winning streak preoccupies Bob, a dance with Lady Luck he has waited for all his life. Suddenly, Bob is startled to realize it is the appointed hour of 5:00 AM, hurriedly cashes in a fortune in chips, and exits the casino floor. Just as his gang arrives, Ledru and the police descend, triggering a shooting spree. Bob rushes out of the casino in time to cradle his dying protégé, Paolo, then is arrested and handcuffed as casino employees trundle out stack upon stack of winnings and place them in the trunk of Inspector Ledru's car.
It is strongly implied that his lucky streak will hold, and he will get off with little or no jail time. Possibly, he quips, he will sue the police for damages – while the beautiful Anne waits for him at his apartment.

Review: Their influence on modern cinema has been incalculable - Melville's creative indepedence, location shooting and low-budgets inspiring the nouvelle vague; his filming of violent men in action everyone from Scorcese and Coppola to Tarantino and Woo; his deconstruction of genre encouraging Bava and Leone.Yet in many ways, 'Bob' is the least typical of Melville's thrillers.
Where 'Samourai' is a masterpiece of tone, in which direction, acting, cinematography, narrative, sound, colour, decor all cohere into a perfect whole, 'Bob' is a riot of clashing modes, more reminiscent of the gleeful iconoclasm of the nouvelle vague - parody and action, humour and seriousness, dream and realism, co-exist in fertile, thrilling tension.The hero is what the title suggests, a man who can't stop gambling, moving from one late-night backroom poker-game to another, betting most of his money on horse-races, leaving his diet to a throw of the dice; he even has a fruit machine in his well-appointed flat, where his art collection seems to consist of framed carpet.
Gambling is his only vice now; formerly a con, he did time 20 years previously for a failed bank job - he now considers himself too old for the criminal grind.After one particularly unprofitable spree, and a chance conversation with a pimp-turned-croupier, Bob and an old friend decide to rob the casino safe at Deauville, and begin rounding up the usual experts and investors, minutely orchestrating the heist.
Like all Melville's films, this is not the story of a gangster, but a dismantling of all the concealed codes, ideologies, assumptions, of the gangster, of masculinity, of Hollywood cinema.One of the ways 'Bob'  breaks with traditional cinema is in its anti-Oedipal bias.
The use of the narrator is interesting too; voiced by Melville, creator of the film, he is also a kind of God-creator, talking about heaven and hell, taking us on a journey from one to the other; talking from the darkness, about how lives cross, but destinies don't meet, than creating a work where crossed destinies are crucial; intruding at bizarre moments, with prior knowledge of the characters' fates before the action has actually determined them.
This, of course, dissipates tension, as does the clownish music, mocking and undermining as much as it propels the action, and the characters' theatricality, their awareness of their roles (eg the rehearsals for the heist like a play).The filming of this goes way beyond Melville's heist models, 'The Asphalt Jungle' (his favourite movie) and 'Rififi' - after all the plot elements have been put in place - the plan, the preparations, the tip-off, the suspense - Melville moves to a completely different register, and what had been a crime film involving many interested parties becomes a solitary, private rite, Bob's gambling in the casino is a heightened, hallucinatory dream, not quite a rite of death, but a rite of middle-age, of letting go the trappings of youth, also paving the way for the great climax of 'The Good, The Bad and The Ugly': the shoot-out is pure, beautiful, dream abstraction.For many, great cinema is defined in rarefied terms of high art, snobbily above the detritus of popular culture.
Daniel Cauchy as Paulo, Bob's right-hand man who also falls for Corey, acquits himself well too here and, on the DVD, delivers an intelligent and delightful 20-minute interview which gives some insight into Melville's working methods, the film's pain-staking shooting schedule (it took some two years to complete during which time Cauchy found time to appear in another four movies!) and also the director's insistence in portraying the 'correct' way of dying on screen.
Howard Vernon has a brief but pivotal role as the shady Scotsman who offers to finance Bob's 'scheme'.Apart from the usual conventions of typical French crime dramas, BOB LE FLAMBEUR introduces some new forms of technique which anticipated the off-the-cuff style of the Nouvelle Vague by some years: the editing has a strange, almost disjointed rhythm to it which is particularly felt near the end during the long gambling sequence at the casino; the hand-held camera-work lends it a slightly amateurish look which suits the mood perfectly; a vaguely avant-gardist touch is also evident in the set design, as in the domino-styled walls of the gambling-dens Bob frequents and the closet in his apartment that is fitted with a privately-owned slot machine!
Another interesting aspect (derived perhaps from Julien Duvivier's PEPE' LE MOKO [1936]) is the mutual admiration that is present between Bob and the Police Inspector played by Guy Decomble.Unlike most of Melville's other work, and particularly his film noirs, the gloomy 'atmosphere' is here counter-pointed by a deft playful mood that makes the film extremely enjoyable despite its fairly slow pace.
His work had a huge influence on the French New Wave led Godard and Truffaut (who cast him in a supporting role in 'Breathless' as an acknowledgment), and has proved to be a major inspiration for American film makers like Scorsese, Tarantino and Paul Thomas Anderson whose debut 'Hard Eight' owes 'Bob le flambeur' quite a debt.
Roger Duchesne is super cool as Bob, the ageing gambler on a perpetual bad streak, Daniel Cauchy is excellent as his cocky young protege Paolo, and Isabelle Corey is sexy and intriguing as Anne, the jailbait who gets involved with them both.
Jean-Pierre Melville's "Bob le Flambeur" (1955) has been often called the first film of the French New Wave.
Acting is great by everyone with Roger Duchesne unforgettable and Isabelle Corey as a young streetwalker Anne whom Bob took under his wing, absolutely marvelous in her first role - child-like innocent yet already perfectly aware of her powers over the men, by the words of Bob's friend, "she will go far -she knows what she wants but does not show it"..
The child of a former friend, Bob becomes the surrogate father figure to Paolo, looking out for him and making sure he isn't consumed by the lure of the mean streets.Bob le Flambeur was one of Melville's earliest entries into the gangster cycle that would later give birth to his better-known film, Le Samourai.
Like that film, Flambeur is a technically assured and understated journey into the underworld, employing a raw cinematic intensity, knowing irony and loose plot, which can probably be seen as an influence on contemporary filmmakers like Martin Scorsese, Ringo Lam, Paul Thomas Anderson, John Woo, Quentin Tarantino, David Mamet and Wong Kar-Wai. It can also be seen as something of a revolutionary work, with Melville's bold use of real locations, available light and hand-held cameras offering an obvious precursor to the style of the later nouvelle vague, and, to great filmmakers like Godard, Chabrol and Truffaut.
Like those directors, Melville has a strong understanding of genre conventions and the post-war Gangster ethos, and thus, crafts a film that is both European in style and sensibility, but at the same time, nods to the classic gangster movies of 30's and 40's Hollywood...
giving us a cool and slick film, that still has enough edge and grit to make the characters seem like real people.The plot unfolds at a natural pace, slowly at first, but gradually building momentum once all the major players have been introduced, with Melville creating something of a confrontational three-way struggle between Bob, Paolo and Isabelle Corey's deceptive femme-fatal.
The story takes all manner of twists and turns along the way, with Melville keeping the story rooted in the details of his characters and the intricacy of the crime it's self, so that by the end the film the whole thing has seemingly worked towards chance and blind luck...
an evocative depiction of glistening black and white France, replete with shady gangsters, crooked cops, gambling dens, back street cafés and the ultimate heist, made all the more potent by the astounding performance of Roger Duchesne as the laconic and iconic Bob, and with great support from Daniel Cauchy as Paulo, Isabelle Corey as the wide-eyed Anne and Guy Decomble as Inspector Ledru..
Stanley Kubrick said he stopped making crime movies because Melville made the perfect one here.Great characters, a memorable score with jazzy sections, great performances, and probably the best pacing and story of any heist/noir/crime movie from the 30's, 40's or 50's.
Bob le flambeur (1956) **** (out of 4) Outstanding heist film about an old-time gangster and gambler (Roger Duchesne) who finds himself broke when he hears that a casino will have a large sum of cash available for the taking.
Nevertheless, the relationship between Bob and Ana is frought with sexual tension.Half way through the film, Bob loses all of his money and decides to put a crew together to rob the casino of 800 million francs (this reminded my a lot of Kubrick's The Killing).
It has lots of typical crime elements in it, such as an heist, likable 'bad guys' and the cat and mouse game between them and the police.It really is a fine made movie, that got directed by Jean-Pierre Melville.
Bob the Gambler was made in the mid 1950s, a few years before Goddard amongst a few others devised the French New Wave and made it popular with films like The 400 Blows and Goddard's own Breathless.
We discover a bit about Bob and his relation to the police as well as a bit on the shady past of the character of Paolo who will contribute to the plot later on since he works at the casino.But the film also consists of both outdoor and indoor scenes that are fascinating to watch.
If Melville had been a bit bolder and included some jump cuts, the New Wave would've started there and then  no question.There is further proof that the film has aged well and that the director was thinking big at the time in the script.
That said, the script is full of witty putdown and lines that don't advance the story but are truly 'real'; very akin to today's Hollywood films after Tarantino gave everybody permission to do so.Bob the Gambler is a number of things and utilises a number of conventions that whilst watching in today's world, seem very familiar to us thanks to recent films but this was France, mid 1950s and even more fascinating: pre-French New Wave.
Bob Le Flambeur (the gambler) is played by Roger Duchesne in a performance that is as cool, concentrated, and amusingly intense as Jean-Pierre Melville's direction is.
And, hopefully, another viewing will change my mind.Isabelle Corey, who was not a 15-year-old as reported in several film noir publications, but in her mid-20s, was nice on the eyes and Roger Duchensne, as "Bob," the lead male also was interesting.The cinematography is pretty good but I've seen films noirs a lot better, not only in the photography but in heist stories.
None perhaps, other than Jules Dassin who went to Paris and made "Rififi", more lauded but not in the same class as "Bob Le Flambeur".It's a heist movie that starts off as a character study so that we get to know Bob and Paulo and Anne and the Inspector who hounds them, as well as numerous supporting characters like the stoolie Marc, the unreliable Roulette-wheel operator and his greedy wife and Yvonne, who runs the local bar.
I watched this film for the first time quite recently on France's TV Monde and found it exhilarating, years ahead of its time, and like Rififi something of a precursor in terms of heist movies.
In this classic film by Jean-Pierre Melville, Bob (Roger Duchesne), a brigand from the glory days of pre-war Montmartre has served hard time due to his refusal to use violence in a famous bank robbery.
Having allowed himself to be imprisoned to save the life of Paolo's father, Bob, who knew no father growing up, becomes the paternal figure for Paolo, surrendering everything to him, including the love of Anne, a gorgeous young woman "well-developed for her age" (Isabelle Corey, then only 16 years old).Realizing he'd ceded everything to Paolo, which is represented by the image of a broken Bob returning home at the early hours of the morning to find Paolo asleep in his bed, having triumphed at seducing Anne and hitting the jackpot on Bob's personal slot machine--something Bob had yet to do; Bob decides to surrender games of chance and after a 20-year hiatus from crime, return for the big payoff.Tipped by a nightclub owner and gambling accomplice, Roger (André Garet), Bob, Paolo and a team of safecrackers join forces with Roger in the seemingly-impossible task of cracking the Deauville casino's state-of-the-art safe.
A bittersweet ending decides the fates of the endearing characters, Bob, Paolo and the lovely Anne, completely dismantling all that was forged throughout the film.Film noir meets the game of love and chance in Melville's masterpiece, one of the greatest films of all time whose influence can be found in all that has come after.
He has unsuccessfully tried to rob a bank in the past, and has spent time in prison.Vincent Canby, writing in 1981, noted "Melville's affection for American gangster movies may have never been as engagingly and wittily demonstrated as in Bob le Flambeur, which was only the director's fourth film, made before he had access to the bigger budgets and the bigger stars of his later pictures." "Bob le flambeur" influenced the two versions of the American film Ocean's Eleven (1960 and 2001) as well as Paul Thomas Anderson's "Hard Eight", and was remade by Neil Jordan as "The Good Thief" in 2002.
Coming a few years before Jean-Pierre Melville's ongoing obsession with trenchcoats and fedoras, Bob Le Flambeur is probably his most traditional noir flick, centered around the titular Bob (played by Roger Duchesne), an aging gangster who decides to go in for one final gamble by robbing a local casino.
In fact Bob's apartment has a clear view of Sacré Coeur.The unique approach recommends this film, but if you are looking for intense heist movies, New Wave Cinema, or film noir, then there are better choices.
This does not change the fact that Bob is nearly broke, so when he hears that the local casino had almost eight millions francs in the safe before the Grand Prix, he ignores his previous bad luck with robberies and sets about planning to steal the lot and get away clean.Shown recently on FilmFour (the free cable station that does show some good film now and again), this film was screened as part of demonstrating to modern viewers that caper movies and "jobs gone wrong" are not new genres that Hollywood has a dominance over.
Although not imitating Hollywood, he improved his narratives by creating characters that captured his audiences' imagination with his cool vision of criminals at work."Bob le fambleur" is sort of an indicator for the big turn the French cinema wag going to experience with the arrival of the New Wave directors in the late 1950s.
The story is about an aging small time gambler Bob (Roger Duchesne a post war movie star), who doesn't sleep with the girl he loves (Isabelle Corey as Anne, according to Melville 16 years of age at that time), but leaves that to almost everybody else.
Interestingly, however, Melville's use of location work, hand-held cameras and improvisation that are so effective in this movie, later became regarded as "de rigueur" by the French New Wave directors who followed him.As the story begins, a cable car is seen symbolically making its steep descent to the "hell" of Montmartre and Pigalle which are the districts of Paris that Bob Montagne (Roger Duchesne) inhabits.
The way in which his profound addiction to gambling affects what happens to him and the rest of his gang that night leads to the movie's very surprising and highly ironic conclusion.Roger Duchesne is charming and cool as Bob and his extremely strong performance captures beautifully his character's unique mixture of toughness, kindness and melancholia.
The contributions of the rest of the cast are also superb."Bob Le Flambeur" has a good plot and an excellent ending but it's the quality of its characters and the atmosphere of their surroundings that ultimately distinguishes it from the more ordinary entries in the heist movie genre..
In a way, "Bob le Flambeur" carries many aspects of the classic film-noir and as a movie made by a fan, it can even be described as a masterpiece of copy in its recreation of the gangster underworld, yet the fan made a movie that inspired many filmmakers, and reinvented the heist sub-genre.
The film plays with all the conventions of a genre, only to provide a classic on its own, getting better after each viewing.The flaws are there but "Bob le Flambeur" shines as a powerful character study about a man who embodies a certain code becoming more and more obsolete, a certain fashion of life, and through gambling, the very attitude that would cause his demise and ironically could save him.
Bob le Flambeur is an interesting little crime film by a director that would prove very influential to New Wave cinema.
Director Jean-Pierre Melville's carefully plotted heist caper "Bob Le Flambeur" (a.k.a.
The cast consists entirely of French actors and actresses, but the director, Jean-Pierre Melville, gained a reputation for making good crime films, including "Le Doulos" (1962) with Jean-Paul Belmondo, "Le Samouraï" (1967) with Alain Delon, "Le Cercle Rouge (1970) with Yves Montand, and "Dirty Money" (1972) with Richard Crenna.Bob (Roger Duchesne) has already served as stretch for attempted bank robbery and he survives on his ability to gamble and win, but he experiences a hard luck losing streak that leaves him temporarily broke.
Bob develops the scheme to steal the fortune, and he brings in a safe cracker and a few other underworld characters to help out, and at the same time the middle aged ex-con becomes involved with young Anne (Isabelle Corey), who has no place to live and stays with any man who will have her.