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“The cinematic birth of the cool!”

– J. Hoberman

BOB LE FLAMBEUR was Jean-Pierre Melville’s first foray into the stylized underworld which became his signature. Suffused with wry humor, BOB LE FLAMBEUR melds the toughness of American gangster films with Gallic sophistication to lay the roadmap for the French New Wave. Jean-Luc Godard couldn’t have made BREATHLESS (1959) without BOB LE FLAMBEUR. Melville even appears in BREATHLESS, as a director interviewed by Jean Seberg, proclaiming his desire “to become immortal and then die.” When François Truffaut first saw the film—the first of Melville’s series of film noirs—he exclaimed, “This is the kind of film that we want to make!” 

As the neon is extinguished for another dawn, an aging safecracker and compulsive gambler named Bob (Roger Duchesne) navigates the treacherous world of pimps, moneymen and naïve associates while plotting one last score—the heist of the Deauville casino. BOB LE FLAMBEUR opens with day breaking at Sacre-Coeur, then follows the tram down the steep slope of Montmartre to Pigalle, snuffing its lights and shuttering its doors in anticipation of the day, moving from heaven to hell. This scene is reminiscent of Georges Franju’s opening to LE SANG DES BÊTES (BLOOD OF THE BEASTS, 1949), where young lovers embracing at the flea market yield to an abattoir. Both are, as Melville puts it, “love letters to a Paris that no longer exists.”

Bob lives by night and sleeps by day, and thrives on his nostalgia for the prewar gangster milieu. He cruises Paris streets in a big American car dogged by a daring camera, a swinging jazz track, and a cool obsession. Like Max, the protagonist in Jacques Becker’s heist film TOUCHEZ PAS AU GRISBI (1954), Bob is essentially a loner surrounded with a loyal coterie of men. Whereas Max seems invulnerable, Bob has a fatal flaw. As the title suggests, Bob’s Achilles’ heel is his gambling addiction. From cards and dice to harness racing, if he can bet or play the odds, he does.

In the opening of the film, street sweepers wash the streets, and a young girl appears, sauntering by men who ogle and stare. According to the voice-over narration, this young girl has “bloomed early for her age.” The girl, named Anne (Isabelle Corey was 16 when filming began) still has the dewy face of a teenager. While Anne strolls aimlessly through the streets, an American sailor lures her onto the back of his motorcycle and rides off with his new prize. Her character seems to be an inspiration for Jean Seberg in Jean-Luc Godard’s BREATHLESS (1960), Anne assumes the role of a femme fatale of sorts in the indiscreet moments that take place between the sheets. Ambitious and amoral, she both receives and gives information, acting as a conduit through her sexual liaisons. Bob’s world is generally male dominated, and he seems unfazed by female perfection. Suzanne (Colette Fleury) the nagging, grasping wife of croupier, Jean, proves the age-old noir wisdom of never confiding in a dame. The two women know about the casino heist and neither of them can keep their mouths shut.

Made over a two-year period, Melville pieced together the film when he had enough money to cover the expenses generated by a few days of filmmaking. Beginning shooting on location in 1954 in gambling dens that were soon demolished for housing developments, BOB LE FLAMBEUR is a variation on John Huston’s classic heist film, THE ASPHALT JUNGLE (1950). Melville, an avid admirer and collector of Americana and American crime movies, took much from the gangsters and brooding tough guys in Hollywood pictures of the 1930s and 1940s. Melville and his characters converse about trust and loyalty, like “If there are two of you, one will betray.” As in Huston’s film depicting a fatalistic and inexorable move toward failure and death, Melville remarked that “I like futility of effort.” The uphill road to failure is a very human thing.

Just as depicted in THE ASPHALT JUNGLE, the gang members are all working class men, making the decision that rather than slave in a system in which they could barely survive, a life of crime was viable and logical, and to them, the only alternative. The decision to choose lives of criminality is a major theme in the film. Most of the people in Bob’s circle – while they live and eke out a living from the human vices – now lead more or less straight lives. But their criminal pasts remain. This film is the beginning of what we have now come to think of as Melville’s world – a drily elegant network of interlocking movements and gestures between laconic gangsters, at once powered and haunted by American cinema, but also leading the path toward the French New Wave.

Shot on location in crisp, gritty black and white by Henri Decaë (THE 400 BLOWS, 1959, PURPLE NOON, 1960), BOB LE FLAMBEUR’s hand-held shots and natural lighting lend the image a fluidity impossible to achieve in the studio. There are no fancy camera angles, no flashbacks or flash-forwards – just a gritty, rich black and white realism that captures the gaudy glitter and tawdry glamour of Pigalle. The cinematography is even more vibrant in this 4K restoration of the film. Extras include a 40-minute documentary about the production and historical significance of the film, including discussion of the Pigalle setting.

BOB LE FLAMBEUR influenced the two versions of the American film OCEANS ELEVEN (1960 and 2001) as well as Paul Thomas Anderson’s HARD EIGHT (1996) and was remade by Neil Jordan as THE GOOD THIEF in 2002.

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