| Jean-Pierre Melville's Bob le Flambeur isn't a particularly great crime film, but it was a deeply influential one. Having absorbed the existential moral universe of the American film noir, Melville reinterpreted it through the lens of ultra-cool Parisian modernist chic, thus helping to pave the way for Jean-Luc Godard and the rest of the French New Wave, who would eventually turn Hollywood on its head in an intertwining and short-lived frenzy of mutual celebration and deconstruction. Melville's titular character, Bob "the high roller," is like an older and slightly less-self-conscious version of Jean-Paul Belmondo's Michel in Godard's Breathless (1959). He strikes the Bogart pose, but he doesn't do it right in front of a Bogart poster. Bob Montagné (Roger Duchesne), platinum haired and completely collected, isn't getting any younger. A professional gambler who works the night scene in the northern Parisian district of Montmartre, moving from one high-stakes poker game to the next, Bob finds himself in the position that all aging criminals eventually do: Things just aren't what they used to be. Firmly ensconced in the post-World War II era in which the once-solidified French underground crime scene was fractured along the lines of who sided with the Gestapo and who sided with the Resistance, Melville paints an atmospheric portrait of Paris after hours. And through it all, Bob moves smoothly. Everyone knows him and he knows everyone. Melville, who wrote the script with Auguste le Breton (Rififi, which is a great crime film), takes his time setting up the characters and the situations in which they find themselves. We meet Inspector Ledru (Guy Decomble), a policeman who maintains a friendly relationship with Bob because Bob once saved his life. We also meet Marc (Gérard Buhr), a pimp who beats one of his prostitutes a little too hard and incurs Bob's anger as a result, thus establishing some of the parameters of the film's moral universe--Bob may live just on the edge of the law, but there are some things by which he cannot abide. We also meet Paolo (Daniel Cauchy), a young and aspiring gambler who holds Bob up as his idol, as well as Anne (Isabelle Corey), a seemingly dispassionate young woman whom Bob takes under his wing. The paths of these various characters loosely intersect and intertwine, the connections becoming tighter once Bob bets it all one night in a high-stakes game and finds himself completely wiped out. Hearing about 800 million francs in a casino safe in Deauville on the night of the Grand Prix, he hatches a plot to heist the whole shebang, which means his moving back into the full-out life of crime he had left behind two decades earlier. The heist becomes Bob's only visible means of salvation--his last way out. Yet, criminal yarns like this one tend to have twists and turns; people who shouldn't know about the heist find out, and, at a crucial moment, there is an unexpected and ironic development in Bob's life that upends all the careful planning and plotting. For some, Bob le Flambeur may be a bit too slow. Melville is certainly leisurely in his pace; he's less interested in the mechanics of the heist than he is in the existential ramifications for the characters and how the sly intervention of fate at just the right moment can change everything. Though following multiple character paths, the film has a decided lack of urgency. Even as it draws to the climax, the voice-over narration comes on like an assurance that there's no need to rush--everything in its due time. Jean-Pierre Melville is not a filmmaker well-known in the United States, which is unfortunate because he adored the U.S. and particularly the movies made here. He was a fiercely independent filmmaker, and he made all of his films on his own terms. He brings to Bob le Flambeur a sharp, formal beauty that adds to the film's overall sense of lingering. Melville loves quiet long shots of city streets in the early hours of the morning as much loud scenes in a crowded nightclub. The world he paints is, of course, one of complete fiction. Just like the world of American film noir, it is more an outward expression of the characters that live within it than it is a reflection of reality. Yet, it is precisely because of this that the film is as compelling as it is. Cinematographer Henry Decaë (who later worked with Louis Malle and Roger Vadim, among others) doesn't bathe the film in the inky shadows of the darkest noir, but rather plays in that twilight zone between night and breaking dawn. There is an undeniably grim element to the film, but overall it is a light-hearted riff on gangster conventions that respects its influences, but doesn't do them the disservice of copying their every move. Roger Duchesne, a hard-working, but never particularly well-known actor brings a force of conviction to Bob that appears completely effortless. When he enters a room, he commands it by sheer force of his presence. He's a gangster, yes, but one who doesn't employ violence, but rather strength of will. He's steely and secure, yet, at the same time, he shows us a particular vulnerability. As a high roller, Bob is at the mercy of his luck, good or bad. And, as much as he controls his life, there is always the hint of ageless fate waiting out there in the city streets.
Copyright © 2002 James Kendrick |
Overall Rating: (3)
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