Customer Reviews

Bob Le Flambeur [VHS]

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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.

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.

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.

This, of course, is a great movie and the DVD also has a really interesting interview with Daniel Clauchy, the actor who plays Paulo, talking about the experience of making this film and working with Melville. Also, an interesting interview with Melville excerpted in the DVD booklet. Not to be a brat, but it's worth nothing that, although one of the other reviewers writes the budget for this film was 10X that of other films of the time, it is actually the opposite--Melville shot this for about 18 million (old) francs, about a tenth of what other feature films cost at that time. He used his own script, unknown actors--famously discovering 15 yr old Isabelle Corey walking down the street--and only a small crew, cutting as many costs as possible. The film, however, looks big budget--gorgeous shots of Montmartre, Pigalle, and Parisian nightlife and a beautifully slick, noir style. Isabelle Corey is wonderful, but also see Guy Decomble from 400 Blows as the police inspector.

It's just a great movie: it's meticulously crafted, there's nothing falsely intellectual about it, and it's interesting to see how much influence this has had on all the heist films that have followed.

Flamber is a French verb which means to wager not just the money you have but the money you don't have. Bob Montagne (Roger Duchesne) has earned his nickname. He's a compulsive gambler, unable to pass a card table or a game of chemin de fer without pausing, then sitting in. He's such a poor gambler, or an unlucky one, that he consistently loses. Bob also is a man with a code of honor and a style. He's middle aged with white hair and a smooth face. He's at heart a gangster and has served time in prison. He's been straight for 20 years, always dresses well and keeps an apartment with a view of the Seine and Sacre-Coeur. He drives a polished, two-tone Cadillac convertible. He once saved the life of Inspector Ledru (Guy Decomble), with whom he is friendly, and keeps under his wing the callow son, Paulo (Daniel Cauchy), of an old mob friend. He intervenes when a young girl, Anne (Isabelle Corey), is about to fall into the clutches of a pimp and takes her to his apartment so she'll have a place to stay...not to sleep with, however. That would be against his code. And when Bob loses his last 700 francs, he learns that the casino at Deauville will have as much as 800 million francs in its safe. The temptation is too much. He and a good friend decide to rob the place. They bring in Paulo, they find a casino croupier to provide inside information, they recruit experienced gangsters, they find a backer. Bob and his gang plan the heist down to the last detail, starting with the chalked outline of the casino in an open field, to careful practice on a duplicate safe, to a clever, short fantasy introduced by a narrator who tells us, "Here's how Bob pictured the heist," that should have you smiling.

But there is also pillow talk to impress a lover, jealousy for better things than a bracelet, a betrayal or two, a murder of retribution and a police inspector who may want to warn Bob off but who is not going to sit by and allow the robbery to take place.

"I'll be upstairs pretending to play the tables to make sure everything's okay," Bob tells his gang. "If not, I'll give you a signal and we'll delay the job. Otherwise, if you don't see me by 5 a.m. sharp, that means we're on." At 1 a.m., Bob is at the casino...and he stops to watch the roulette table. Before long he's sitting in, then moving to play chemin de fer, then moving on to play in one of the casino's private rooms. Occasionally he remembers to check his watch. And for once in his life, Bob le Flambeur is winning bigger than he could ever have imagined. The movie moves to a conclusion which includes a twist of elegant irony, a bit of violence, and a hope that Bob will be able to afford a very good lawyer.

Bob le Flambeur may be a simple story about a gambler, but it's also a fascinating tale of style and grubby ambience. Melville filmed the movie over two years, a few days at a time whenever he could come up with the money. He used a hand-held camera out on the streets of Paris. He shows us the grimy, wet streets of Montmartre and the Pigalle neighborhood, with late-night bars and after-hours gambling dens, neon signs, jazz clubs, wet streets, gangster patrons and tough bartenders, hostesses and their marks, milky pastis and lots of cigarette smoke. Melville spends the first 40 minutes of the movie setting us up with Bob, his style and his milieu. It just carries us along.

Melville, it is said, had a great influence on the French New Wave directors. He's spoken of with admiration by such current directors as Scorsese, Woo and Spielberg. When he at last was able to attract name actors, he wrote and directed movies such as Le Samourai and Le Circle Rouge. And while Jean Cocteau invariably gets the credit for Les Enfants Terribles, it was Melville who co-wrote the script and directed. The Criterion DVD edition has a black-and-white transfer which is first-rate. The DVD includes an interesting video interview with Daniel Cauchy, who played Paulo, as well as a short radio interview with Melville.

Since some years ago , Bob , a delinquent in the fifties great amateur to game has been a timeless looser . He meets a teenager just before to fall in prostitution and decides rescue her , he gives some money and receives her in his home . But at once Paulo a orphan and homeless young man will fall in love with her . Very soon he will be inspired for a ambitious plan , and organizes with supreme shyness and coordination every little detail concerned with the master robe but ironically the fate once more makes a raid . the rest runs for your own .
This film constitutes the first policiac title of Jean Pierre Melville and stamps the irruption amazingly mature of a style simply unconfoundable. The firmness of its building and the perfection of its calligraphy are factors which convert it in an self determined entity valuable and bty itself, despite of the relayionship that you can establish with other next work.
Bob le flambeur attends more the instant than the globality , it is much more a cronicle than a spectacularly dramatized account. The movie seems to be made under the fascination of the american cinema . The film gives out a freeing and liberty , such trust in the expressive power of the image , made in equal parts of rules knowing and instint for ignore them . The raccords and the axis are not at all barriers which imprison the narrative freedom .
You will watch a Montmartre flood of heterogeneous night fauna . What Bob experiences in his lucky game was described for Kafka as the most dangerous of the tasks: to remeet and remake oneself in front of a mirror image pierced in a fragment of crystal .
The tragedy is variegated with a comedy patine , which turns in a more real perspective with that life tricks , these unknown crossroads set in the road as an army of naked demons. Undoubtly we are in the presence of a immortal work , timeless and deeply revealer of those times . And notice that Rififi was released the same year too .
The candor of the characters depicted and the soft breeze of a nocturnal Paris with its little madness and and caprices make of this film a supreme jewel and one of the pioneers films of the fifties in all the story of the cinema

In P.T. Anderson's commentary for HARD EIGHT, he talks about how this film was a big influence and that he probably owes Melville some money. I'd have to agree. Regardless, this film(and Melville's other films) are just so damn cool I can't blame P.T. This is a very interesting take on a gangster film. Apparently, Melville changed it from more of a heist-focused movie once he saw ASPHLT JUNGLE(Melville had been working on it when John Huston's film came out). Bob is a great character and this is a great dvd! Thanks Criterion(now bring out LE DOULOS andI'll be really happy!)!

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 and a trenchcoat. He's a gambler with ethics (such as his hatred of pimps). But, when things get desperate for him, he falls back on his failed career of 20 years before - robbery - this time of a casino.

Usually I find the heist in Melville films the most interesting part, but this time I preferred the early, mood-setting scenes of this movie in which the gambler strolls thru Montmarte streets between the backroom gambling dens and his home and haunts. And I liked his efforts to aid a wayward young woman -- primarily because that woman was played by Isabel Corey. The detailed heist was interesting, and there's a cool and cruel twist at the end.

As usual, Melville's direction is top notch. The pacing, as usual, is very deliberate. Financial desperation on Melville's part forced him to cast minor actors, so the faces were unknown to me - but I wish Isabel Corey's wasn't. Forget Bardot or Loren. Corey put most European sex kittens of the time in the shade (altho, it seems she could barely act).

The Criterion DVD has a couple extras. The best is a recent interview with aging Daniel Cauchy who played the young man in this film. He has a lot of interesting information (such as how this film qualifies as his third and seventh film). Also available is a radio interview with Melville but the American host formulated obtuse questions that would challenge an American much less Frenchman Melville. I gave up on that one part way in.

I've since learned that Roger Duchesne ("Bob") had been accused of working with the Gestapo during the war. That may explain why this and his only other post-war film were made some 10 years later. How ironic that he's the star of one of the most admired and influential movies to come out of France.

Most people reading the reviews I assume already know of the movie and are thinking about buying it because they can't find it or because they've seen it and like it. For those who haven't seen it...do.

It's said filmmaker Melville is sort of a grandfather of the French New Wave. But BOB LE FLAMBEUR is more entertaining today than anything Godard or Truffaut ever made. This flick isn't just an exercise in style; sure, it has plenty of that, but it also has a great cast of characters, a good plot, and is just plain fun. In other words, this film isn't a mood movie. It's the real deal.

Have fun dropping the title into conversation. Do it slyly and, when someone says they've never seen it or heard of it, act offended. And make sure you say the title with a thick French accent. It's fun! I'm kidding, of course (or am I?). But this is a really good movie!

Warning: this is NOT an action movie. You will be disappointed if you're expecting to see a lot of details surrounding the planning and execution of a major heist. Get Rififi if that's what you want.

'Bob' is stylish, leisurely paced, and NOT a caper flick (or barely qualifies as one). The film is not about a heist, it is about Mr. Bob and his all-consuming passion for gambling. Gambling is his sustenance, his downfall, and his savior. Women only seem to bring trouble (except for Yvonne, the cafe owner). How he acts and thinks, his values and judgments, are part of the old world of gangster-gentlemen which doesn't exist any more. It is, like many French films, a study in character, and what an interesting character it is!