105 minutes, some violence, some sexuality (R by MPAA standards).
Fair Value of Bob Le Flambeur: 80 million Francs! More seriously, $12.00. This is an essential film for anybody that is a fan of the heist genre. Once you’ve seen this movie, Soderbergh, Michael Mann… you’ll know where half the directors in Hollywood got their tricks from. Like Halloween or The Godfather, this film might seem cliché, but that’s because it’s the genesis of the cliches for the genre.
Down and Out on the Rue Pigalle: Bob knows everybody in the slums of Montmartre, and everybody knows Bob (Roger Duchesne). With his five o’clock shadow and his rumpled trenchcoat, Bob Montagne is a gambler and hustler, going from hosting one backroom game of craps to the next blind pig. His days start at night and he turns home at dawn. He’s on a first-name basis with the vice cops, the pimps, the prostitutes. He’s a well-respected small timer, supposedly living off of the proceeds of a big heist that he made before the war.
He tries to help street teenagers, he has a young protégé named Paulo who he’s teaching how to run simple games like three card monte, but everybody thinks his luck (and his money) is running out. Something’s going to have change. Bob is going to need to win a big score. Luckily, he overhears something said from a croupier while he’s visiting a fancier high-end casino…
Birth of the New Wave: Sweeping, bird’s-eye aerials from the rooftops, looking down on the characters; jump cuts, shaky cam tracking shots; geometric architecture landscapes with weary characters filled with ennui; it is not for nothing that director Jean-Pierre Melville is considered the godfather of New Wave, but Melville never became a darling of Cannes like Godard or Truffaut. Like Sidney Lumet, Melville was almost too gritty to be a film-school auteur, even though (like Lumet) he’s the secret underpinning to a great amount of the style of cinema.
And Bob le Flambeur is a masterpiece of subversion, exploiting the previous expectations that had been created by the Hays-code gangster films like White Heat and Asphalt Jungle.
Cool and Close to the Vest: For the first half hour of the film, a modern film-viewer might feel like they’ve been subjected to a bait-and-switch: the movie seems to be more a Jim Jarmusch style film about the diminishing lives of middle aged hoodlums than a big heist film Be patient, and more importantly, be extremely observant. The twists in this movie are sharp and fast. It really is one of those pieces of cinema that is a grand illusion- I wonder if you’ll be able to get it, even when my warnings make you prepared for it.
Bob le Flambeur is the kernel of Steven Soderbergh’s crime and thriller movies, but Bob Montagne would slit Danny Ocean’s throat easily. What Melville achieves is a balance between the grit and the glamour; for every scene we get of men in dinner jackets, playing chemin-de-fer in private rooms, we get an equal scene of the pimps and the strip clubs of Montmartre. And it’s that see-saw between grit and effervescence that makes this film so engaging: I never became so entranced with gambling as I did when I saw this film. It really gives you an insight into the experience that fuels a gambling addiction like few other films. The film sets out a lot of the classic heist movie formula: the drawing of the plan, the gathering of the motley crew of eccentric (and unreliable) specialists and thugs, the mounting tension as more complications and leaks occur. But it’s a daring feat of cinematic jiu-jitsu, using the dramatic sensibilities of the viewer against the viewer.
I loved it. I consider it a film with a truly ruthless character, and a ruthless heart. Bob Le Flambeur is hard noir that camouflages the laterwhite-knuckle intensity with an easy-going, happy-go-lucky prelude. Even if you’re not into heist films, this is an essential film for cinematic literacy. From The Italian Job to Hard Eight to Heat and Ocean’s Eleven, you’ll see a little Bob Le Flambeur in nearly every crime movie you ever watch after seeing this one.
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