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33 out of 42 people found the following comment useful :-
Melville: two syllables - magic., 29 August 2000

Author: Alice Liddel (-darragh@excite.com) from dublin, ireland

the first of Jean-Pierre Melville's astonishing and unique cycle of gangster films, which have been variously called 'ironic', 'structuralist', 'post-modernist', 'doconstructionist', 'existential', 'Lacanian', 'oneiric', 'philosophical' etc. 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, say, 'Le Samourai' exists in a sparse, abstract, geometric, dreamlike Paris, the Montmartre of 'Bob' in vibrantly alive, with its nightclubs, bars, stray GIs, petty hoods, casual sex, late-night gambling. Where in 'Samourai', the hero's character is pared down to psychological abstraction, Bob is a recognisable human being, stern, but sweet, honourable, a Chandlerian knight, with back-history and motivation. Other characters are plausible, if elusive, also. 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. Yet, ironically, he is a methodical man, keeping to the same routine, the same hours, one night losing a fortune, another making one. 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. Almost immediately the plans fall through - the dissatisfied wife of the inside man informs the police, as does a thug Bob once refused to help. The casino boss is informed, the police lie in waiting. And yet Bob goes ahead...

For a man who took his pseudonym from one of the great novelists; who adapted most of his films (including 'Bob') from books; and who wrote his own screenplays, Melville has little patience with words, and the story of Bob is brilliantly encapsulated in a series of establishing images. The opening narration eulogises Montmartre with shots defining milieu in realistic terms. yet, when we first see Bob, he is in a setting of extreme artifice, with symbolic chess walls (a recurring pattern) and pictures of, rather than actual, locations. He puts on his trenchcoat and fedora, his signs of movie criminality; whereas Jimmy Cagney and Humphrey Bogart's characters WERE gangsters by their deeds, Bob plays the role of a gangster just as Ledru plays the role of a cop, and Anne plays the role of vamp or femme fatale - they are recognisably human behind their 'types', but, in this world made of movies, they cannot do the sensible, plausible thing, but are locked into their roles, despite Ledru's humanistic insistence otherwise. Sense would tell Bob to give up the heist; his pre-ordained role means that he cannot.

As he walks in the early dawn at the beginning, he looks into a tarnished mirror, a further visualisation of the difference between one's self and one's role, identity etc. In an extraordinary long shot, the road-sprayer that circles Bob is echoed in the circular shapes of a nearby park, echoing the circles of the film, the vicious circle Bob gets trapped in, the circles of the casino, the cycles of life. He watches as Anne is picked up by an American motorcyclist - Bob as helpless observer; the movie will dramatise the various ill-fated ways in which he will try to move from passive to active, to stop being a pawn of fate; the frequent, unmotivated-angle shots undermine this. 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. ; A conventional film often uses an Oedipal trajectory, usually showing an immature hero's moral progress, often defeating an older figure, taking his place and power, and winning the girl. This is a necessary process of continuity for the social order. And this seems to be fulfilled here, as Paolo, who hero-worships Bob, obeying him like a father, takes his place, takes his girl, takes his apartment to have the sex Bob can't have anymore, even using Bob's gestures. Bob is a shadow of himself, de trop in his own home. As it should be. The subsequent narrative could be seen as an attempt of Bob's to regain his identity and power, and to emasculate Paolo.

This sublime film is full of little twists of the norm like this. Isabelle Corey is unprecedented among all film heroines, her amoral, seemingly indifferent sexuality far more suggestive and powerful than her contemporary, Bardot's - her fulfilling her femme fatale role does not result in tragedy any more than Bob's fulfilling his gangster role does.

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. For some of us, though, great cinema means a transformative enriching and expanding of popular genres, a cinema that can speak to everybody, not above them, but making the familiar strange. Keaton. Hitchcock. Hawks. Whale. Ophuls. Sirk. Leone. Melville.

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17 out of 18 people found the following comment useful :-
Bob le galant, 19 October 2006

Author: Camera Obscura from Leiden, The Dutch Mountains

BOB THE GAMBLER (Jean-Pierre Melville - France 1955).

Bob le Flambeur is a man of honour, an easy-going gangster with style and etiquette. He doesn't like pimps or other low-lives with disregard for the rules of the game. He also likes to help out young girls that are out late on the streets without disrespectful thoughts on his mind, just like Melville first spotted the young Isabelle Corey on the Place de la Madeleine.

She was only 15 years old when he decided to give her a major part in the film. Although she delivers her lines like she hasn't got a clue what she's saying, she does look absolutely stunning! One scene in which she is wearing garters is pure cinematic art. Although tame, almost cute by today's standards, this is pure erotisme coupled with high art. There is a scene where she is half naked, which - strangely enough - didn't cause a scandal in those days. Probably because nobody knew her age and French manners at the time were notoriously relaxed, but in America this must have been unthinkable and absolutely scandalous. Although the IMDb states the film was released in the U.S. in 1981, the film did get an earlier release in - I think - 1957 under a different title and did reasonably well at the box office.

The casting of Roger Duchesne is a fascinating story as well. He was quite a well-known film star before the war, but during the war he drifted into a life of crime and left acting, because the Parisian underworld forced him to leave Paris because of his debts. Since Melville wanted him for his film, he applied to the mob and they allowed Duchesne to come back. According to Melville in a 1970 interview, he was selling cars out near the Porte de Champerret at the time. This strange blurring of reality and fiction much resembles the fate of Alain Delon in the '60s and '70s, the star in Melville's later films LE SAMOURAI and LE CERCLE ROUGE, who was also suspected of ties with French criminal circles.

The movie takes a bit long in the beginning to establish Bob's lifestyle, but once the planning of the heist started, things get going. Don't expect great acting or fast action. The film is slow, and will undoubtedly bore the living hell out of young people today. Contrary to what many believe, this is not the godfather of the heist film or the first depiction of gangsters in French cinema. After all, Dassin's RIFIFI was released a year earlier and there was MIROIR (1946) by Raymond Lamy, but it is the first to throw all (mostly American) genre conventions in the blender and come up with a totally unique take on the genre. Much more a "Comedy of manners", as Melville put it, it focuses on the human side, gangster etiquette, and above all, the film is about his beloved Paris nightlife. His portrayal of gangster life might be romanticizing and unrealistic but - like all his films - were shot on location in Paris and do show us an atmospheric look of shabby Montmartre in the fifties.

It's important to realize this is not a portrait of Parisian gangsters in the fifties, but a throwback to prewar gangster codes. The cars, music and fashions are very much 1955, but Bob still upholds the prewar old school code. In Melville's universe, gangsters and police officers are on intimate terms. When arrested and put in the back of a police car, Bob is offered a cigarette immediately and treated with all the respect a man can wish for. If there is any film that should be considered Nouvelle Vague by today's definitions of this vaguely defined term, I consider this film to be the first. Here he carefully deconstructed all the cinematic language of American films and film noir in particular, much less conspicuously than Godard did with BREATHLESS in 1959. Melville does it in such a subtle fashion, it's difficult to see whether he presents us the real thing, a parody or a little bit of both. Whatever it is, it's a unique mix of American film language and Melville's unique cinematic sensibility.

Camera Obscura --- 9/10

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16 out of 20 people found the following comment useful :-
BOB LE FLAMBEUR (1955) - DVD Review, 13 June 2004
Author: MARIO GAUCI (marrod@melita.com) from Naxxar, Malta

Yesterday I have watched Jean-Pierre Melville's BOB LE FLAMBEUR (1955) for the first time, by way of Criterion's exemplary DVD edition. The film is a typical 50s French noir in its presentation of divided loyalties among a gang of crooks, women causing trouble, an elaborate heist-gone-wrong, police interrogation, etc. With this, Melville's first outing in a genre he later made his own, the director shows he is already at one with the milieu, capturing its every nuance and mannerism with almost effortless ease.

The cast is relatively low-key but all the main roles are admirably filled. Unfortunately, none went on to do much else of importance (apart from Howard Vernon) - and it was, in fact, lead actor Roger Duchesne's penultimate film. Looking a bit like Rudolf Klein-Rogge (who as Dr. Mabuse also played a gambling crime lord), he exudes a smooth charisma and is quite arresting in his playing. Isabel Corey, still a teenager but looking incredibly sexy and mature, was literally hand-picked by Melville himself for the role of Anne, the lovely waif whom Bob takes under his wing but whose inexperience eventually leads, in part, to his downfall. The film also makes brief yet subtle use of nudity which, at that time, was not something one would hope to find in American movies! 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. The film's conclusion then, improbable as it may seem, provides a perfect and deliciously ironic twist - complete with a wonderful closing line.

Criterion's DVD also includes a rather vague radio interview, conducted in English in 1961, with Jean-Pierre Melville who is made distinctly uneasy by interviewer Gideon Bachmann's frustratingly opaque questions. We learn, however, of Melville's great love of American cinema as well as his own work's belated but well-deserved international recognition. I have now watched 8 of Melville's films - LES ENFANTS TERRIBLES (1950); BOB LE FLAMBEUR; LEON MORIN, PRETRE (1961 - possibly forthcoming on DVD from Criterion); LE DOULOS (1962 - possibly forthcoming on DVD from Criterion); L' AINE' DES FERCHEAUX (1963); LE SAMOURAI (1967); L' ARMEE' DES OMBRES (1969 - possibly forthcoming on DVD from Criterion); and UN FLIC (1972 - I still haven't gotten round to purchasing the Anchor Bay R1 DVD). I haven't yet watched LE CERCLE ROUGE (1970 - possibly forthcoming on DVD from Criterion) which I own on VHS, but I may just check it out now that I'm in the mood for more Melville movies!

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11 out of 15 people found the following comment useful :-
Classic French crime movie from the 1950s. An influence on everyone from Godard and Truffaut to Paul Thomas Anderson., 27 April 2003
Author: Infofreak from Perth, Australia

Cult director Jean-Pierre Melville was originally involved with French art legend Jean Cocteau, but really found his niche making hard boiled crime movies. 'Bob le flambeur' was the first major work by him, and he kept making movies up until the early 1970s with 'Dirty Money'. 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. 'Bob..' really knocked me out, and along with the equally brilliant 'Rififi' directed by Jules Dassin and released the same year, it's one of THE great crime movies of the 1950s, and should be mentioned in the same breath as Huston's 'The Asphalt Jungle' and Kubrick's 'The Killing'. All four films have had an enormous influence on most subsequent movies in the heist genre. 'Bob's plot is quite simple but the story itself isn't the half of it. What Melville DOESN'T say is just as important as what he does, and the viewer has to piece a lot of it together for himself. 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. Personally I prefer this movie and 'Rififi' to 'Breathless' and any French New Wave I've seen to date, but that says as much about my taste as much as the movies themselves. Even so I highly recommend 'Bob le flambeur' to anybody who involves crime movies. It's a classic of the genre, and still fantastically entertaining.

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8 out of 10 people found the following comment useful :-
Gamble, Bob, Gamble, in it is the source of salvation, 16 November 2006

Author: poco loco

Imagine a movie in which a gambler finds out about a huge payday at a casino and decides to pull off a major heist. He and a couple of friends find a rich backer to put up the money necessary to pull such a large heist and then Bob (the gambler) decides to enlist some others to help out. In the end, he has involved not 9, not 10, but 11 people in the heist. Sound familiar. This hugely influential film by Jean-Pierre Melville has spawned both versions of Ocean's 11 and is also often credited as the grandfather of the Nouvelle Vague movement.

This movie is French, so unlike the American versions of Ocean's Eleven, there is no singing, no laughing, no hi-fiving, just straight-faced gambling, plotting and even the loving is grim and made without a smile. The characters are memorable, especially Bob and Anne as they go through life expecting no happiness. Bob never goes to bed before 6am, as he spends his nights, every night, gambling at different locations. This addiction is part of who he is and plays a key role in the twist at the end.

This movie is like a good strong Camembert. As with many French movies, definitely an acquired taste, but once one learns to appreciate the sharpness, one realizes that there is nothing comparable. Camembert, unlike bacon, is not the food of joy. But it is good, flavorful, and powerful in making one want to partake again and again. Until you feel the tanginess in your mouth, there is no describing the taste or effect, but it is definitely worth the effort to build an appreciation for it. 8/10

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4 out of 5 people found the following comment useful :-
Revolutionary crime-noir, from the director of Le Samourai, 27 March 2008
Author: Graham Greene from United Kingdom

Bob Le Flambeur opens with a glimmering shot of early morning Paris, where we find the rugged, nonchalant hood Bob Montagne, sauntering through the neon lit streets, looking every bit the icon of cinema that he is. To Bob, everything in life is a gamble, an uncertainty, a ten-to-one shot. He inhabits a world of games and chances... as the gravel voice narration points out, "the city can be both heaven and hell, as long as you know how to play it". He is, as the title suggests, a man who lives and loves gambling. A one-time crook now taking it easy, we find him huddled in a smoky apartment - the walls painted black and white like a chessboard - hard at work towards yet another pay off. When he isn't 'working', Bob lives the simple life, hanging out in bars with old pals or relaxing in his penthouse apartment. His only real companion is Paolo, a young tearaway who idolises and emulates Bob's look and lifestyle. 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. As the film progresses, we delve deeper into both the plot and the back story, finding Bob seriously out of pocket after a spot of bad luck at the casino... and, with only one way to go to get the cash back, he decides to pull off the ultimate gamble... by which, allow himself to be pulled back down into the criminal underworld that he'd almost escaped. From this point on the film becomes concerned with the intricacies of crime, the impact of friendship and the fixation and fundamental need to succeed, or else, forfeit the next ten to twenty years of your life... and for the aging Bob, this is not an option. At this point, loyalties are tested and precision film-making is pushed to the limits as the plot continues headlong towards its climax. 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... proving to some extent Melville's grand metaphor that life is the ultimate gamble.

Melville's film is one of the classic post-war noir films, if not one of the most important French films ever made... 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.

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4 out of 6 people found the following comment useful :-
Cool and elegant blend of American gangster film and French sophisticated comedy of manners, 19 June 2007

Author: Galina from Virginia, USA

Jean-Pierre Melville's "Bob le Flambeur" (1955) has been often called the first film of the French New Wave. First or not, French New Wave or not, "Bob le Flambeur" is one of the coolest and memorable films I've seen. The most fascinating element of this exquisite crime/dram/noir film is its title character, Bob Montagne- Bob the Gambler (Roger Duchesne). All women wanted to be with him and all young men wanted to be him. He was the man well respected and liked by the cops, the criminals, and the gamblers alike - the king of cool, the elegant loser with his own respectable code of honor. He drove an American car and wore an American hat but he belonged to the streets of Montmartre, Paris, where he was born just as the film itself that could've been only made by a French director who admired American films and had created a perfect blend of American gangster film and French sophisticated comedy of manners. Made back in 1955, the movie is fresh, crisp, sensual, modern and simply delightful. Having watched already all "Ocean's" movies, including Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack's classic, I see where the inspiration for them came from. "Bob Le Falmbeur" was released in the USA in 1982, nine years after Melville's death and became an instant cult hit. Often, cult movies are not the best made but it is not true in the case of "Bob le Flambeur". Its direction is perfect: seemingly simple and truly elegant, its cinematography is beautiful, its music score is amazing and its characters are not the caricatures - they are the real human beings of flesh and blood and they have something (or a lot) to lose. 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".

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5 out of 8 people found the following comment useful :-
A History lesson in more ways than one., 17 September 2007

Author: johnnyboyz (j_l_h_m@yahoo.co.uk) from Hampshire, England

It's probably common practice to brush aside films that were once made before a country really had a 'boom' in terms of coming up with their own film form or film movement. 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. You can take numerous examples from down the decades: Does any one remember or still watch any German films before their Expressionism movement in the 1920s? What about Italian film before the 1940s or Danish films before the Dogme '95 movement? This is where Bob the Gambler is living proof that it hasn't aged that badly as we (or at least I'm) still stumbling across pre-film movement films and enjoying them for what they are.

It's not just Bob the Gambler that is an example of French film and how pre-new wave French film has survived; a lot of the Lumière brothers films should be the first point of call for someone wondering where film and cinema came from; the answer is of course the French. Bob the Gambler as a film is just simply fascinating – its look, its use of locations and its actual narrative just ooze class. Melville uses a very clever technique to introduce not just the characters and the setting but also the film as a whole without even touching on the story. This is done through the opening thirty or so minutes which just consists of character interaction as we discover what types of people these characters are and any other necessary information about pasts or whatever is delivered to us through dialogue. 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. The indoor scenes for reasons just said and the outdoor scenes as more of a historical lesson if anything. This is post war Paris captured on film with cars and buildings acting as brilliant, timeless and irreplaceable mise-en-scene. And yet, Bob the Gambler has enough essence of noir, crime and innovation to keep it worth watching. There's a shot of a nipple in the film that surely would've had censors doing somersaults, several suggestions that sex has happened is implied by way of the scenes ending and there's even room for a shot from the backseat of a travelling car as the two occupants drive to their destination and maybe share a glance. Two things: 1. Would a Hollywood film from the time include such a scene or just get them there without the journey and 2. The shot is eerily similar to that of the one in Goddard's 1960 film Breathless where Michael is describing what he likes about the girl sitting next to him in list form. 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. My personal favourite scene is when they're going over the heist plan and one of the robbers stands to attention as non diegetic music stars up before Bob yells at him to sit back down and then the music immediately stops. Melville toys with us once again and has fun with the soundtrack simultaneously whilst probably having a stab at Hollywood for the time. 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. If ever there was a film to watch in order to see what French film was like 'pre-movement', then this is it. Not one to be brushed aside.

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4 out of 7 people found the following comment useful :-
Brilliant Genre Film that Fights Conventions, 8 September 1999

Author: Stroheim-3 from Boston, MA

I just watched Bob le flambeur for a class on the French New Wave. The film is brilliant. The title character is a complicated former gangster who has mellowed out since spending time in prison. He reminds me a great deal of Burt Lancaster's character in Atlantic City. He is an old-timer in a world that has moved on.

Bob is a gambler (hence the title of the film) that never wins. He has a relatively big win at the races but then blows it all in a casino. He seems destined to be a loser. The fact that he always loses may have some bearing on why he refuses the sexual advances of the young and beautiful Ana. Instead of bringing her into his web of misfortune, he "gives" her to his Polo (the son-figure). 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). What follows is Bob's retreat into his original gangster form. At one point, he slaps Ana across the face - something that he (at the beginning of the film) would not have ever done. In addition the second half of the film is filled with sequences of the gang "training" to rob the place. Some of these are extremely hypnotic such as the lock-picker opening a copy of the casino's safe.

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Vintage French Crime Caper, 3 October 2009

Author: Van Roberts (zardoz@bellsouth.net) from Columbus, Ms

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Director Jean-Pierre Melville's carefully plotted heist caper "Bob Le Flambeur" (a.k.a. "Bob the Gambler") qualifies as an atmospheric exercise in film noir as well as one of the best French crime films about a robbery. During the first part of the action, Melville establishes the character of our ill-fated protagonist, while the second part concerns the planning and the execution of the crime. This vintage black and white robbery is reminiscent of the Hollywood film noir crime films and Melville does an effective job of setting up the robbery. Chiefly, "Rififi" scenarist Auguste Le Breton and Melville generate considerable tension because everybody, including the police, gets wind of Bob's plans. Mind you, this is a French language caper with English subtitles so only the most stalwart crime thriller aficionados may find this hold-up film enjoyable. 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. Meanwhile, he is a gracious guy who has helped out a lot of people, including Paulo (Daniel Cauchy) and Anne (Isabelle Corey), and he takes care of them as if they were his children. Bob is also close friends with a police investigator. It seems that he saved the cop's life when he shoved him out of the line of fire of a bullet. The police inspector genuinely cares about Bob and doesn't want to see him do anything stupid. Bob and his accomplicees decide to rob a Deauville casino. Ironically, the night of the hold-up, Bob wins a bundle at the gaming tables and loses all track of time.

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