The original score
>> Bob le flambeur is a classic of the heist genre

by MARK SLUTSKY

Jean-Pierre Melville’s Bob le flambeur wasn’t released in the U.S. until 1982, but its influence by that point had been felt for decades. The inspiration for both Ocean’s Eleven and, in some ways, for filmmakers of the French New Wave, 1955’s Bob mixed elements from American crime films into the mythologized Parisian underworld. The result was an exhilarating and charming heist picture, set against grainy nighttime Montmartre.

Bob was released in the same year as another Paris heist classic, Jules Dassin’s Rififi, and they share more than writer Auguste Le Breton (who wrote Rififi and collaborated with Melville on this one). Both start from the exactly same point, and follow a similar course, though with extremely different results. Like Rififi, Bob begins at dawn in a gambling den, where our hero, the flambeur (or “high-roller”) of the title, is busy losing his money. We follow Bob (Roger Duchesne) through his meandering Montmartre existence of gambling dens and bars, where everyone seems to sleep during the day.
Duchesne is an ex-con, but a moral one, whose only real vice seems to be gambling; he’s even loved by the police. He’s got a protégé, the ambitious Paulo (Daniel Cauchy), an excitable youth who obviously idolizes him. When an aimless young woman (Isabelle Corey, who isn’t a great beauty but nonetheless works a great kittenish sexiness) goes for Duchesne, he casually redirects her to Cauchy. One night on a gambling spree, Duchesne encounters an old acquaintance working in the Deauville casino, and, realizing he’s near the end of his funds, hatches a scheme to rob the casino on the day of the Grand Prix, when the fancy hydraulic safe will contain more money than any other day of the year. So springs into motion a complicated sequence of preparation that ends in a most unexpected way.

Though scenes will be familiar to anyone who’s seen movies influenced by it and Rififi—like the preparation of the heist and the last-minute foul-ups—Bob le flambeur’s chief charm is that what you expect to happen doesn’t, and what you don’t expect, does (revealing any more would be cheating). Moreover, it keeps a light and comic tone while maintaining just enough gravity that it’s not completely weightless.

A note: the 35mm print showing at the Parc is semi-new, and features newly translated subtitles, but it is by no means a restored or cleaned-up version. There are still scratches and fuzz here and there, so don’t go expecting a pristine copy. Though that shouldn’t deter you at all; the occasional scratch, if anything, adds to the effect of the grainy nighttime cinematography. It’s well worth it to see Bob le flambeur in a movie theatre, especially if you have any passing interest in heist movies, French cinema, or good times in general. By the way, look out for the last scene, which Steven Soderbergh riffs on in a recent crime movie of his that isn’t Ocean’s Eleven. :

Bob le flambeur opens Friday, Sept. 13 at Cinéma du Parc

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