Jean-Pierre Melville

Bob le flambeur

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.

Film Info

  • 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

Purchase Options

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
Bob le flambeur
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

Jean-Pierre Melville
Jean-Pierre Melville

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.