Bob le flambeur

Bob is a symbol of the nostalgic atmosphere that crime films returned to in the 1960s and 1970s. Jean-Pierre Melville wrote an original screenplay that revealed a desire he never abandoned: to observe the lives of people suffering from the panic-inducing threat of betrayal. The story of gambler Bob, who not only risks his money but puts his own life on the line, is set against a nostalgic backdrop of the Paris the director knew as a boy. All the more, then, did he concentrate on a detailed depiction of the milieu where conmen and gangsters keep company with a host of underworld characters. Although he originally wanted to present an image of the prewar world, after seeing The Asphalt Jungle (1950, dir. John Huston) the director rewrote the script as a comedy of manners. The film also evokes a life lived underground, which the director knew from working with the resistance. For both resistance fighters and gangsters, betrayal is synonymous with death. And falling in love means risking betrayal or even a death sentence. The movie, which focuses on the relationship between a cop and a crook with a passion for gambling, stylistically expresses admiration for an earlier French film, Confessions of a Cheat (1936, dir. Sacha Guitry). Although at the time of its creation Melville was part of the production and distribution structure, the picture lacks nothing of his distinctive trademark style. Bob le flambeur reveals the first unmistakable signs of the future auteur’s formally sophisticated and philosophical genre movies.