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Bob le Flambeur (The Criterion Collection) (1956)

Gerard Buhr , Daniel Cauchy , Jean-Pierre Melville  |  PG |  DVD
4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (32 customer reviews)


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Product Details

  • Actors: Gerard Buhr, Daniel Cauchy, Claude Cerval, Isabelle Corey, Guy Decomble
  • Directors: Jean-Pierre Melville
  • Format: Black & White, Subtitled, NTSC
  • Language: French (Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono)
  • Subtitles: English
  • Region: All Regions
  • Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
  • Number of discs: 1
  • Rated: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
  • Studio: Criterion
  • DVD Release Date: April 16, 2002
  • Run Time: 98 minutes
  • Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (32 customer reviews)
  • ASIN: B0000633SC
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #123,211 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
  • Learn more about "Bob le Flambeur (The Criterion Collection)" on IMDb

Special Features

  • New Transfer With Restored Picture & Sound
  • Video Interview With Daniel Cauchy ("Paulo")
  • Radio Interview With Jean-Pierre Melville
  • New & Improved Subtitle Translation

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

A singular masterpiece that served as a clarion call for the coming French New Wave, this 1955 love letter to the city of Paris and the American urban noir films of the 1930s and 1940s is precisely the sort of cinematic consideration of genre influences that became the soul of early works by Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, and Claude Chabrol. Directed by Jean-Pierre Melville (a filmmaker so enamored of American culture he adopted the name of Moby Dick's author), Bob le Flambeur (Bob the Gambler) concerns a courtly gangster who plans on robbing a casino. But the film is less about the trappings of a conventional heist tale than about Melville's embrace of the form and his wistful weavings within it. The title character (Roger Duchesne) is almost a knight errant, with a visible gallantry and code of loyalty suggesting Melville's own dreams of film tradition, reinvented into something both faithful and new. A terrific experience and an important sliver of film history. --Tom Keogh

Product Description

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.

Customer Reviews

4.3 out of 5 stars
(32)
4.3 out of 5 stars
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
22 of 23 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars A great discovery! October 11, 2002
Format:DVD
I first saw this movie at a local film festival a year ago and fell in love with it. The characters are fascinating, ones you want to revisit again and again. And what a terrific caper! Isabelle Corey, one of the great but unrecognized beauties of the '50s, is marvelous.

It's great to now own this film on DVD. Lots of good extra features, including an audio interview with the director (from 1960) and a brand new filmed interview with one of the stars.

If you enjoy film noir and "gangster" films, this French classic is a must.

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20 of 21 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars COMEDY OF MANNERS AND MENACE July 17, 2002
Format:DVD
Essentially a comedy of manners with menace, "Bob the Gambler" or "BOB LE FLAMBEUR" is a great caper film that also heralded the coming French New Wave. The electric, slang-filled French dialogue written by Auguste le Briton ("Rififi") has a rhythm and snap that is nicely mirrored in the cool, slick, sometimes sinister unfolding of the story itself. Unfortunately, the dialogue suffers a little in the not quite spot on English subtitles.

Director Jean-Pierre Melville pretty much invented the French crime film. After World War II Melville (real last name Grumbach), made films on a shoestring, on location and without stars. He was alone among all French filmmakers who made pictures entirely on his terms. This 1955 film, with a budget about ten times bigger than a typical French film of its time, is also a loving portrait of Paris and an homage to the noirish American films of the 40s and early 50s. Especially John Huston's "Asphalt Jungle."

Roger Duchesne is Bob, a courtly gangster with a natty style not unlike the late mobster kingpin Gotti, who plans on robbing the Deauville casino. But the film is not so much about the details of Bob's one last heist as it is about playing with the genre itself. Bob is a dark knight with a code of loyalty that conflicts with the amorality of his profession just as the filmmaker Melville toys with the makings of a new film tradition. A terrific film that beats the old and new versions of "Ocean's Eleven."

This new digital transfer, like all Criterion discs, is superb. Extras include an interview with Daniel Cauchy ("Paulo") and a radio interview with director Melville, who was so enamored of American culture that he took the last name of Moby Dick's author.
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12 of 13 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars A staggering, hugely influential, one-off. April 11, 2001
If 'Bob le Flambeur' is known at all today it is as inspiration for the New Wave, with its cheap location shooting, its cinephilia (especially american) and its dismantling of genre. In this, it is perhaps even more successful than 'A Bout de Souffle' - despite Godard's best efforts, he is defeated by the charisma of his stars.

Melville called 'Bob' a 'comedy of manners', and it is much lighter in tone than his later, more famous gangster films. As the title suggests, it is Bob's gambling, rather than criminality, that is important - look at how the circle of the roulette wheel and horses shape the film's imagery and structure.

There is a tragic gangster plot, a heist, an Oedipal conflict, but they co-exist with the comedy, a dream modernism and a documentary evocation of 1950s Montmartre (its nightclubs, neon lights and cacophony of sounds (three years before 'Touch of Evil')) and Deauville (its casinos and beaches). This is the sort of movie that will spend ten minutes on a man playing cards, and one on the heist he has spent the whole movie organising.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews
3.0 out of 5 stars The film from the time French cinematography lead
In the pre-computing epoch of simply believing into Lady Luck ex-crim Bob made a living in the France of the fifties last century with gambling (and hidden proceedings of money... Read more
Published 5 months ago by Michael Kerjman
4.0 out of 5 stars Good for Melville
Much better than his other films that are dead slow spending too much time on the in betweens. This one does get going a bit. Too bad his other films are not this way.
Published 16 months ago by Shock Writer
4.0 out of 5 stars A heist film which focuses mostly on the planning
A very well made heist film which focuses mostly on the planning of the heist and very little on the execution. Read more
Published 17 months ago by Michael Harbour
5.0 out of 5 stars Honor among gamblers
The director of this movie, Jean-Pierre Melville, was fascinated by the concept of honor. In both this film and Le Samourai, the central character is acting throughout the movie... Read more
Published 23 months ago by S. Smith-Peter
4.0 out of 5 stars Helped Set the Protocols of the Gangster Flick
"Bob Le Flambeur" (Bob the Gambler), (1955), is a black and white classic of the French cinema, a hard-boiled crime thriller, one of the atmospheric gangster pictures that French... Read more
Published on January 31, 2011 by Stephanie DePue
4.0 out of 5 stars THE GOOD THIEF
I would say that BOB LE FLAMBEUR is a very good film, but somehow not as satisfying as Neil Jordan's remake THE GOOD THIEF, with Nick Nolte.
Published on January 25, 2011 by S. J. MIHAL
3.0 out of 5 stars Slow but stylish crime drama
The Bottom Line:

Melville made his living crafting films like this but Bob le Flambeur can't hold a candle to other offerings like the masterful Army of Shadows: it... Read more
Published on September 15, 2009 by One-Line Film Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars Ah, Monsieur Bob...
Just saw this movie again after probably two decades, and it's still one of the more gripping - and probably the pleasantest - of the great heist/noir movies I've ever seen. Read more
Published on December 30, 2007 by Liza B. Stough
4.0 out of 5 stars Stylish French Gangster Film Noir
I saw Le Samourai recently and liked it a lot. I read up on Jean Pierre Melville and learned that Bob Le Flambeur was considered by many cineastes to be one of his masterpieces. Read more
Published on September 13, 2007 by R. Swanson
4.0 out of 5 stars An American Film Noir from out of France
This displaced American film noir movie was made by French auteur Jean-Pierre Melville. It has a white-haired leading man (Roger Duchesne) who, Bogart-like, wears a wide-brim hat... Read more
Published on July 20, 2007 by J. A. Eyon
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