Bob le Flambeur - Criterion Collection
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Claude Cerval, Daniel Cauchy, Gerard Buhr, Guy Decomble, Isabelle CoreyCinematographer: Henri Deca?
Composer: Jean Boyer
DVD: Region Code 0
Audio: French (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; English (Subtitled)
Format: Black & White, DVD-Video, NTSC, Subtitled
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 102 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2002-04-16
Audience Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: Criterion
Movie Reviews of Bob le Flambeur - Criterion Collection
Movie Review: Bob le Flambeur
Summary: 4 Stars
It would be very easy to compare "Bob le Flambeur" to Jules Dassin's Rififi. Both have a middle-aged protagonist fresh out of the slammer: Bob Montagne and Tony Stephanois, respectively. Both have a young pup who looks up to said protagonist. A gal's rejection is arguably a partial catalyst in each when it comes to pulling off a heist - a casino in "Bob" and a jewelry store in Rififi. In each, there is a code of honor that even reprobates aspire to. And the cinematography in both films show off Paris to a stunning degree.
But, in what would be only in retrospect, there is no mistaking a Jean Pierre Melville film with a lonely romanticized anti-hero all decked out in suit underneath a trench coat, oftentimes hatted, a cig hanging from the corner of a mouth. Sometimes there's a nightclub (bebop, bebop) and a girl who's usually played by a vacant-eyed actress (in this case, a vapid Isabelle Corey spilling out of every outfit). In this Melville, Bob the high roller is out of jail and attempting to stay out of trouble. As jaded cafe owner, Yvonne, says to him, he is too old to survive another stay in prison. But the lure of eighty million francs in the Deauville casino safe and perhaps one too many games of baccarat might ultimately be his undoing.
A terrific film with tons of atmosphere as well as an interesting precursor to the even more accomplished Le Samourai and Le Cercle Rouge.
Summary of Bob le Flambeur - Criterion Collection
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 na?ve 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.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, Fran?ois 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
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