Crime dramas and gangster stories became one of the most successful genres of American cinema during World War II and in the years that followed. In France, American movies had been banned during the German occupation, which only accentuated the thirst for overseas cinema and about everything American in the years immediately following the end of the war. The French would be the ones who found the right words to give a name to this cinematic style – film noir. Among the French directors who adored American films, Jean-Pierre Melville was probably the most fascinated of all, he imported and adapted the genre, and gave it an unmistakable French touch. ‘Bob le Flambeur‘ released in 1956 (under the generic name Melville) is one of the reference films of his career, a film that contains many of the cinematography elements of the school that would receive the name Nouvelle Vague a few years later.
The story of the making of the film is also very interesting. Melville was not only a talented film director, but also a precursor to what we today call independent cinema. But the cause of his independence was quite prosaic. Following a conflict with the trade unions in the industry, he had to produce his film on a very low budget, with almost amateur actors or in any case unpaid, with mobile cameras because the fixed ones cost too much, on the streets of Paris because he had no funds for studios, etc. The result is original and remarkable. ‘Bob le Flambeur‘ is the biography of a good-hearted gangster-gambler who risks in gambling or on horse races betting not only the money he has or doesn’t have, but also his own life and of those around.
Bob’s role is played by Roger Duchesne, who, like the hero of the movie, had his glory period some 20 years before. Obstructed by suspicion of collaboration with the German occupiers during the war, he had disappeared from screens for more than a decade. Melville (who was Jewish) gives him the opportunity to return to the screen and play a penultimate role in his career. I’m sure that Belmondo (who debuted that same year) saw this movie. It even has a scene where the hero looks in the mirror. Duchesne is given replica by Isabelle Corey, a young 16 years old beauty, who reminded me of Brigitte Bardot (with whom she was to play for the next year in Roger Vadim‘s ‘…And God Created Woman‘), but who was less fortunate in her career, perhaps because she resembled too much the famous star. The most successful scenes are the ones filmed in Montmartre and around Place Pigalle, and some of the dialogues between gangsters or with the police officers that integrate well into the atmosphere. The script is less successful, the plot has quite a lot of wholes, especially psychological ones. The film is to be remembered in particular by Duchesne‘s interpretation and by the images – a document of a glamorous underground Paris.