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Bob Le Flambeur (1956)
Link to full movie: French with English subtitles (with commercials, unfortunately)at IMBD: http://www.imdb.com/video/hulu/vi3213073689?ref_=tt_pv_vi_1
wiki: Bob le flambeur ("Bob the Gambler" or "Bob the High Roller"
is a 1956 French gangster film directed by Jean-Pierre Melville. The film stars Roger Duchesne as Bob. It is often considered a film noir and precursor to the French New Wave because of its use of handheld camera and a single jump cut.
The director, Jean-Pierre Melville (born Jean-Pierre Grumbach; 20 October 1917 – 2 August 1973), with the French Resistance during World War II, adopted the nom de guerre Melville as a tribute to his favorite American author, Herman Melville. The director loved all things American after his experience during the war, including gangster films. After the war, he applied for and was refused a license to become an assistant director. He became an independent film director and started his own studio.
Melville's independence and "reporting" style of film-making (he was one of the first French directors to use real locations regularly) were a major influence on the French New Wave film movement. Jean-Luc Godard used him as a minor character in his seminal New Wave film Breathless. When Godard was having difficulty editing the film, Melville suggested that he just cut directly to the best parts of a shot. Godard was inspired and the film's innovative use of jump cuts have become part of its fame.
Melville's movie is the equivalent of the modernists at the turn of the 20th century, whose work was rejected by the French Academy. This group of artists responded to World War I with Dada, Surrealism, Cubism, "Ready Mades" and changed the face of French art by rejecting the classicism typified by state-approved art. Melville's work, more than fifty years later, precipitated a similar moment in film.
Review by Roger Ebert: http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-bob-le-flambeur-1955
Before the New Wave, before Godard and Truffaut and Chabrol, before Belmondo flicked the cigarette into his mouth in one smooth motion and walked the streets of Paris like a Hollywood gangster, there was Bob. "Bob le Flambeur," Bob the high-roller, Bob the Montmartre legend whose style was so cool, whose honor was so strong, whose gambling was so hopeless, that even the cops liked him. Bob with his white hair slicked back, with his black suit and tie, his trenchcoat and his Packard convertible and his penthouse apartment with the slot machine in the closet. Bob, who on the first day of this movie wins big at the races and then loses it all at roulette, and is cleaned out. Broke again.
Jean-Pierre Melville's "Bob le Flambeur" (1955) has a good claim to be the first film of the French New Wave. Daniel Cauchy, who stars in it as Paolo, Bob's callow young friend, remembered that Melville would shoot scenes on location using a handheld camera on a delivery bike, "which Godard did in 'Breathless,' but this was years before Godard." Melville worked on poverty row, and told his actors there was no money to pay them, but that they would have to stand by to shoot on a moment's notice. "Right now I have money for three or four days," he told Cauchy, "and after that we'll shoot when we can."
This film was legendary but unseen for years, and Melville's career is only now coming into focus. He shot gangster movies, he worked in genres, but he had such a precise, elegant simplicity of style that his films play like the chamber music of crime. He was cool in the 1950s sense of that word. His characters in "Bob" glide through gambling dens and nightclubs "in those moments," Melville tells us in the narration, "between night and day ... between heaven and hell."
...The climax of "Bob le Flambeur" involves surprising developments that approach cosmic irony. How strange, that a man's incorrigible nature would lead him both into and through temptation. The twist is so inspired that many other directors have borrowed it, including Paul Thomas Anderson in "Hard Eight," Neil Jordan in "The Good Thief," and Lewis Milestone and Steven Soderbergh, the directors of the "Ocean's Eleven" movies. But "Bob" is not about the twist. It is about Bob being true to his essential nature. He is a gambler.
Jean-Pierre Melville's "Bob le Flambeur" (1955) has a good claim to be the first film of the French New Wave. Daniel Cauchy, who stars in it as Paolo, Bob's callow young friend, remembered that Melville would shoot scenes on location using a handheld camera on a delivery bike, "which Godard did in 'Breathless,' but this was years before Godard." Melville worked on poverty row, and told his actors there was no money to pay them, but that they would have to stand by to shoot on a moment's notice. "Right now I have money for three or four days," he told Cauchy, "and after that we'll shoot when we can."
This film was legendary but unseen for years, and Melville's career is only now coming into focus. He shot gangster movies, he worked in genres, but he had such a precise, elegant simplicity of style that his films play like the chamber music of crime. He was cool in the 1950s sense of that word. His characters in "Bob" glide through gambling dens and nightclubs "in those moments," Melville tells us in the narration, "between night and day ... between heaven and hell."
...The climax of "Bob le Flambeur" involves surprising developments that approach cosmic irony. How strange, that a man's incorrigible nature would lead him both into and through temptation. The twist is so inspired that many other directors have borrowed it, including Paul Thomas Anderson in "Hard Eight," Neil Jordan in "The Good Thief," and Lewis Milestone and Steven Soderbergh, the directors of the "Ocean's Eleven" movies. But "Bob" is not about the twist. It is about Bob being true to his essential nature. He is a gambler.
9 replies
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Always loved the title, though!
Thanks for the link!
Look for JP Melville's cameo in Godard's "A bout de souffle", and if you haven't seen it already, watch Melville's extraordinary "Le Samourai."
P.S. I'd watch the movie online if I didn't already own a well-worn copy.