Bob le Flambeur - Criterion Collection
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Movie Reviews of Bob le Flambeur - Criterion Collection
Movie Review: What about Bob?
Summary: 4 Stars
The story of Bob is a very good one. Told by the expert hands of Melville, Bob le flambeur sucks you in with wonderfull pacing, integrity and a strong sense of itself. The movie is about a crook of a dying kind - honorable and civil (the movie hinted that Bob was part of La bande à Bono; who invented bank robbing with a gateway car!)- who wants to hit a big scrore before fading out in retirement. Bob le flambeur is a joy to watch because the movie is not afraid to take it's time in telling it's story. Not to say that the movie is slow, the pacing let's you soak up the atmosphere and the feel of things. When a movie of this kind is well done (as it is the case here)you get caught by it and you will always find yourself with a renew desire to watch it again. To me this is the best reason to warrant a purchase, and furthermore, Bob is a realy cool guy. Movie Review: Gallic phlegm, highlighted by an atmosheric thriller.
Summary: 5 Stars
A rollercoaster ride, from beginning to end. The characters are superbly portrayed by the Director, the plot is believable, the end contains a message, years ahead of its time. Movie Review: Lady Luck Ushers in the French New Wave.
Summary: 4 Stars
"Bob le Flambeur" is a much-lauded precursor to the French New Wave directed and co-written by Jean-Pierre Melville. The street shots, hand-held cameras, and rhythm were New Wave before the Wave arrived. Bob Montagne (Roger Duchesne) is an ex-hood and inveterate gambler down on his luck. He enjoys the friendship of Paris Police Lieutenant Ledru (Guy Decomble) who once sent him to prison. Paulo (Daniel Cauchy), a young protege, looks up to him. And Bob's protective instinct has moved him to take in teenaged prostitute Anne (Isabelle Corey), who proves irresistible to Paulo. But Bob is broke. When he learns that the Deauville Casino will have an enormous sum of money in its safe on Grand Prix Day, Bob plots with old friend and safecracker Roger (Andre Garet) to heist the casino.
Jean-Pierre Melville's admiration for American crime films of the 1940s and gangster films of the 1930s is evident in "Bob le Flambeur". This film looks back to a pre-War underworld culture at the same time it looks forward to the New Wave. "Bob le Flambeur" had a modest reception when it was released in 1955 but became the object of much admiration in the 1960s. The film is vaguely plotted, the characters barely written, and the acting ranges from adequate to bad. I don't see anything brilliant here, but the film's style is the main attraction. Its amateurishness is very much a part of that style, along with location shooting and a rhythm derived from the streets. I was immediately intrigued by the backgrounds that are almost constantly enveloped in fog, causing the figures in the foreground to stand out sharply against the murky features behind them.
The female characters are conspicuously hollow -not surprising, as Melville gravitated toward men's stories. Young Anne and the wife (Colette Fleury) of croupier Jean are plot devices. They are two-faced, stupid, and pathologically selfish. And that's it. They exist to throw a monkey wrench into the men's plans. And Anne brings some sex to the film. Their motives are incomprehensible and, I think, actually nonexistent. The vacuousness of these two non-characters is conspicuous in Bob's mostly male world. I think fans of the New Wave will be fascinated by "Bob le Flambeur", while others will not be. It has more to offer as a style that reflects and anticipates the intellectual and social movements of a certain time and place than it has story or characters. "Bob le Flambeur" was remade as "The Good Thief" in 2003. Although its approach to the heist is more conventional and "Hollywood", the depth of characters and acting are better in "The Good Thief".
The DVD (Criterion Collection 2002): Bonus features are 2 interviews and a theatrical trailer (3 1/2 min). "Daniel Cauchy Interview" (22 min), conducted in 2002 by Lenny Borger, is interesting and worthwhile. Cauchy, who played Paulo, talks about working with Jean-Pierre Melville, the trials of shooting intermittently over a 2-year period, the underworld culture that Melville wrote about, the film's themes, and filming his death scene. In French with English subtitles. "Jean-Pierre Melville Radio Interview" (20 min) was conducted in 1961 by Gideon Bachmann for his "Film Art" radio show. Melville discusses what attracted him to American filmmaking, his style as a predecessor to the Nouvelle Vague, his approach to filmmaking, and themes. In English and French. Film is in French with optional English subtitles.
Movie Review: A heist movie that's all about style and the gangster code, just like Bob, and with a great twist of elegant irony
Summary: 4 Stars
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.
Movie Review: Just missed for me.
Summary: 4 Stars
Bob Le Flambeur tells the tale of a life-long gambler who has his ups & downs (more "downs" as of late) with the cards, but keeps as steady a pace as his modest means can afford him. He lives in a semi-posh neighborhood in Paris, but spends a majority of his time ducking in and out of small card clubs and dive bars to catch his next gamble. Bob is also a mentor to a younger, hipper guy named Paulo who aims to be Bob personified.
Bob's (and everyone else's) troubles begin when he befriend's Anne, a fresh-faced street-walker, who takes Bob for just another well-off guy who wants to lavish the young lolita with gifts for sex, but is genuinely curious about her motivations in life. The whole relationship (if you could call it one) is very light and platonic, with Bob giving her a place to stay (she had just been hopping from bed to bed) while he stays out all day gambling. He introduces Anne to Paulo and he falls for her, of course. She could care less about who she's with as long as they spoil her, but Paulo is young and foolish and confides in her one night in bed about a fantastic heist Bob has planned on a regional casino, despite Bob's friendly warning.
The next night, Anne has too much to drink and relays Paulo's bombastic promise to spoil her after the heist to a local pimp named Marc she's about to sleep with. Marc's plan to utilize his strong pimp hand on Anne is put on the back burner, as he needs to give this new-found information to the police in order to keep himself out of jail for beating up his own wife (who he's also pimping out). Everything falls on one long night, laying in wait to pull the heist.
Although Bob Le Flambeur isn't as gripping as the aforementioned heist films, it does paint a brilliant picture. Bob's quid pro quo with Inspector Ledru could very well be the inspiration for the modern heist classic Heat's DeNiro-Pacino t?te-?-t?te. And Criterion sure makes a damn fine looking dvd.