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| Director Jean-Pierre Melville |
BOB LE FLAMBEUR (Bob the Gambler) A France (102 mi) 1956 d: Jean-Pierre Melville
If anyone wants to capture the flavor of early Godard, one need look no further than this film. Featuring the roving eye from the impressive, near documentary street cinematography by Henri Decaë, the city of Paris comes alive in black and white, especially in the twilight hours between darkness and light, including the wee hours of the morning when cleaning trucks bathe the streets with a new coat of water. Each new day begins anew with this strange ritual baptism. A narrator informs us about Bob the Gambler (Roger Duchesne), an unflappable gentlemen who’s as comfortable with cops as he is gangsters, but after serving time for a robbery has been clean for twenty years. Nonetheless, his constant trenchcoat and fedora make him the spitting image of the film noir era gangster. Rarely showing his hand, his emotions remain close to the vest at all times, yet he spreads tips around with such regularity that he’s a welcome customer anywhere. Much like Bogart’s Rick Blaine in CASABALANCA (1942), Bob lives in that dubious moral void between right and wrong, black and white, night and day, and shifts his leanings depending on which way the wind blows. Bob is a professional gambler who spends his nights in cramped quarters with a guard at the door, usually calling it a night’s work when everyone else is just starting their day. By chance, he meets Anne (Isabelle Corey) in one of those early hours as her striking femme fatale looks especially at that hour are unforgettable, even to a man thirty years her senior. Bob is all style and gallantry, always freshly groomed and looking like a million bucks even while he’s losing his shorts. When he steps in to rescue Anne from a pimp, he is setting the moral guidelines for his turf, as gambling is a recognized profession while the world of pimps is filled with violence and sexual exploitation of women.
Filled with the glitter of flickering neon signs of bars and outdoor cafés, Melville’s film is a tribute to those late hour joints that feature American blacks playing jazz music, where there’s a thrill in the air at the newly discovered postwar freedoms, where people can finally live again and not have to look over their shoulders. Bob’s young protégé is Paolo (Daniel Cauchy), a young, more spirited version of himself who tries to imitate Bob in every way, but Bob sees him more as the son he never had and looks after him with fatherly interest, reminding him when he occasionally runs astray. Paolo and Anne are more the same age so a romantic affair is in order, but Anne is too mature for Paolo and remains more aloof and mysterious, even as she quickly rises from a coat check girl to a hostess who actually performs shimmy dance routines to the hot, soulful music at night. Despite the film’s meticulous detail to Bob’s regular routine, where his politeness and charm make him a regular customer in Yvonne’s bar, his hangout where Yvonne (Simone Paris) is steady as a rock in his corner, he begins to go hard on his luck as the size of his bets only increases his losses, leaving him open to the temptation of an $800 million dollar bank vault at one of the casinos where he plays, a luxury resort that caters to the rich with a reputation for carrying lots of cash after a good night’s work. While the first third of the film establishes Bob and his routines, in the next third he’s rounding up his team and designing the plans to actually rob this supposedly impenetrable vault, while the final third is the event itself.
Humans being who they are, they remain flawed and weak at the core, especially those living on the edge to begin with, and word starts to get out about their plans, making the cops and the underworld suspicious of what Bob’s up to, leaving him in a precarious predicament, as he could go through with his plans anyway and risk a botched effort where someone’s already tipped off or they could scrap it altogether. Well there’d be no movie if he chose the latter, so the heist is on, double crosses and all, though in a somewhat altered version that plays out like a fantasy version where Bob goes on a dream run at the casino and all but forgets about the heist plans, which go awry, but leaves Bob with a solid alibi, as he was firmly planted at the gaming tables. One suspects at any minute to be socked in the mouth by a gritty real life version with far more damaging results with Bob losing and losing big until he feebly walks into a waiting setup. But while there is gunfire, Bob arrives on the scene far too late. With a narrator that interrupts whenever they please, the end is reminiscent of CASABLANCA, as Bob and his friendly police commissioner (Guy Decomble) make friendly small talk in the car that is now carrying Bob’s multi-million dollar cash winnings that pretty much provide the same results as a heist. Interesting how the film makes it clear how close we all come to crossing the line of questionable moral choices, where the cops and the gangsters for all practical purposes are both teetering perilously on that same edge.
