Bob le flambeur
(Bob the Gambler)
With Roger Duchesne, Isabelle Corey, Daniel Cauchy.
France, 1956, DCP, black & white, 98 min.
French with English subtitles.
DCP source: Rialto Pictures
“Montmartre is both heaven and hell,” proclaims Melville himself at the beginning of Bob le flambeur, setting an appropriately liminal stage for a film about a gentleman criminal aging out of his familiar underworld. Roger Duchesne is the debonair title character, a man well known about town for both his prison time and his knack for winning at the craps table. But an uncharacteristic losing streak puts Bob back in the mood for delinquency, and the upcoming Grand Prix horse race in Deauville offers an ideal venue for a big casino robbery. Upon setting his mind to it, Bob assembles a crew of ruffians to plan and finance the job, setting in motion a series of backroom exchanges and intricately plotted rehearsals that make the film a thinly veiled rumination on the filmmaking process. Bob’s thrifty, inexhaustible leadership recalls that of Melville, who engineers this on-location quasi-thriller with a degree of economy and roughness that would directly inspire the French New Wave.
