BOB LE FLAMBEUR Movie Review

Bob the Gambler

There's a brief, throwaway moment in Stanley Donen's comedy Bedazzled in which the devil (Peter Cook) is seen casually ripping the last page out of Agatha Christie thrillers before shipping them off to book stores. If he'd really wanted to be devilish, he would have snipped the priceless, soul-satisfying final line of dialogue out of all prints of Jean-Pierre Melville's wonderful 1955 film noir about an aging, gentleman gambler out to make one last big score. Bob Montagne (Roger Duchesne)—the “Bob the Gambler” of the title—has been compulsively placing bets all his life, but now he needs to call in his chips and settle the bets of a lifetime. Bob's scheme involves putting together a team to knock over a posh Deauville casino, but as the clock ticks down, all odds seem to be stacked against him. Bob le Flambeur is often cited as a seminal work of the French cinema's New Wave movement, in large part because of the freewheeling nighttime and location cinematography of legendary cinematographer Henri Decaë. Discovered by American critics at the 1982 New York Film Festival and later released commercially in the U.S. for the first time. Bob le Flambeur's success helped to raise awareness of Melville in this country, a process which continued with the recent release of the restored version of his 1967 masterpiece, Le Samourai.

NEXT STOP … Touchez pas au Grisbi, Le Samourai, The Killing

1955 97m/B FR Roger Duchesne, Isabel Corey, Daniel Cauchy, Howard Vernon, Gerard Buhr, Guy Decomble; D: Jean-Pierre Melville; W: Jean-Pierre Melville, Auguste Le Breton; C: Henri Decae; M: Jean Boyer, Eddie Barclay. VHS, LV COL, CVC, ING