Bob le flambeur

Suffused with wry humor, Jean-Pierre Melville’s Bob le flambeur melds the toughness of American gangster films with Gallic sophistication to lay the road map for the French New Wave. As the neon is extinguished for another dawn, an aging gambler navigates the treacherous world of pimps, moneymen, and naive associates while plotting one last score—the heist of the Deauville casino. This underworld comedy of manners possesses all the formal beauty, finesse, and treacherous allure of green baize.

France
1956
102 minutes
Black & White
1.33:1
French
Spine #150

Special Features

Interview with actor Daniel Cauchy (“Paulo”)
Radio interview with director Jean-Pierre Melville
Theatrical trailer
New and improved English subtitle translation

New cover by Gordon Reynolds

DVD 1 Disc Out Of Print SRP: $29.95

Special Features

Interview with actor Daniel Cauchy (“Paulo”)
Radio interview with director Jean-Pierre Melville
Theatrical trailer
New and improved English subtitle translation

New cover by Gordon Reynolds

Cast & Credits

Cast

Roger Duchesne: Robert Montagné, alias “le Flambeur
Daniel Cauchy: Paulo
Isabelle Corey: Annie
Guy Decomble: Police Lieutenant Ledru
André Garet: Roger
Claude Cerval: Jean, the croupier
Colette Fleury: His wife
Gérard Buhr: Marc

Credits

Director: Jean-Pierre Melville
Screenplay: Auguste Le Breton
Screenplay: Jean-Pierre Melville
Dialogue: Auguste Le Breton
Commentary written and spoken by: Jean-Pierre Melville
Assistant director: François Gir
Cinematography: Henri Decaë
Camera operator: Maurice Blettery
Sets: Claude Bouxin
Costumes: Ted Lapidus
Editing: Monique Bonnot
Music: Eddie Barclay
Music: Jo Boyer
Sound: Pierre Philippenko
Sound: Jacques Carrère
Continuity: Jacqueline Parey
Production manager: Florence Melville
Unit manager: Philippe Schwob

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Jean-Pierre Melville

Writer, Director

Though remembered now primarily for his intense, spare 1960s gangster films, French filmmaker Jean-Pierre Melville had a startlingly varied career, encompassing wartime dramas, psychosexual character studies, and a collaboration with Jean Cocteau. Jean-Pierre Grumbach (he would eventually change his name to Melville to honor the American author of Moby Dick) fought during World War II, first in the French army and then in the Resistance; those experiences would often inspire his work to come. After the war ended, he pursued his love of film with dogged obsession. Though a lover of classical studio directors (William Wyler and John Huston among them), Melville worked mostly independently, even building his own studio. It was this fierce do-it-yourself attitude, and such startling, uncompromising films as Les enfants terribles and Bob le flambeur, that appealed to the filmmakers of the French New Wave, who adopted Melville as a godfather of sorts (Godard even famously gave him a cameo in Breathless). During the New Wave, however, Melville went his own way, making highly idiosyncratic crime films—classically mounted if daringly existential—that were beholden to no trend, including Le doulos, Le deuxième soufflé, and Le samouraï. His most personal movie was Army of Shadows, which, though misunderstood upon its initial French release in 1969, is now widely considered a masterpiece. Melville died of a heart attack in 1973 at the age of fifty-five.