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Saturday, Jun 24, 2017
6:30 PM (98 mins)
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BAMPFA
SUBJECTS
Bob le flambeur
(Bob the Gambler)
featuring
Roger Duchesne, Isabelle Corey, Daniel Cauchy, André Garret,
Bob le flambeur is Melville’s love poem to Paris’s Pigalle and its lowlife denizens. It’s a gangster film that is turned by Melville’s taste for the absurd into what he calls “a comedy of manners,” albeit cast in the shades of the pure policier. An aging safecracker and compulsive gambler, Bob (Roger Duchesne) lives by night and sleeps by day, and thrives on his nostalgia for the prewar gangster milieu, before the infiltration of the Gestapo upset the delicate balance between cop and criminal. He cruises Paris streets in a big American car dogged by a daring camera, a swinging jazz track, and a cool obsession. Bob’s going for the big stakes now: the casino vault in Deauville. “I like futility of effort,” Melville said. “The uphill road to failure is a very human thing. . . . Even so, Bob is still a light-hearted film, [one that] ends on a pirouette.”
FILM DETAILS
Screenwriter
- Jean-Pierre Melville
Cinematographer
- Henri Decaë
Language
- French
- with English subtitles
Print Info
- B&W
- 35mm
- 98 mins
Source
- Rialto Pictures
CINEFILES
CineFiles is an online database of BAMPFA's extensive collection of documentation covering world cinema, past and present.
View Bob le flambeur documents
Bob le flambeur (review), Time Out New York, Stephen Garrett, 2001
Hell and high water (review), Village Voice, J. Hoberman, 2001
The road to Melville (article), Village Voice, Elliott Stein, 1996
Jean-Pierre Melville: the French connection (program note), Pacific Film Archive, Judy Bloch, 1996
[Bob le flambeur] (review), Village Voice, Andrew Sarris, 1985
Bob le flambeur: when old is new (review), Reader (Los Angeles, Calif.), David Ehrenstein, 1982
Vive Bob! (review), East Bay Express, Michael Covino, 1982
Jean-Pierre Melville: the rebellious classicist (review), Village Voice, Andrew Sarris, 1982
Bob le flambeur (program note), Toronto International Film Festival, 1982
Bob le flambeur (program note), The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Stephen Harvey
Displaying 10 of 16 publicly available documents.