Bob le flambeur
Jean-Pierre Melville
Bob is a former gangster who has retired from business, on account of his age, to devote his time to his favourite passion: gambling. His is the world of low down dives inhabited by people pushing back the boundaries of the law. After a bad streak of luck where Bob loses all his money, he takes up an offer to break into the safe of the casino in Deauville on the day of the Grand Prix...
With : Isabelle Corey, Roger Duchesne, Daniel Cauchy, Guy Decomble
Screenplay : Jean-Pierre Melville
Image : Henri Decaë
Sound : Pierre Philippenko, Jacques Carrère
Editing : Monique Bonnot
Screenplay : Jean-Pierre Melville
Image : Henri Decaë
Sound : Pierre Philippenko, Jacques Carrère
Editing : Monique Bonnot
Production : O.G.C., Productions Jenner, Play Art, La Cyme
Distribution: Tamasa Distribution
Distribution: Tamasa Distribution
Filmed on location in Montmartre and, for the first time, in Melville's studios in the Rue Jenner in Paris, Bob Le Flambeur is a depiction of the French underworld as Melville new it before the war. "I wrote Bob Le Flambeur in 1950, five years before shooting it. My initial intention was to make a "serious film", but once I'd seen Huston's masterpiece The Asphalt Jungle, I decided to totally rework my script to turn it into a happy film. Bob is not a pure detective film, but a comedy of manners" (J-P Melville). The film was praised by the young generation that was soon to give birth to the New Wave, and it was natural that three of the movement's major films, Claude Chabrol's Le Beau Serge, Louis Malle's L'Ascenseur pour l'échafaud and François Truffaud's Les Quatre cents coups had the same director of photography, Henri Decaë, who started out with Melville in 1947 on Le Silence de la mer.