Rating: 
Summary: Bob's the name; flambeuring's the game
Review: After watching Bob le Flambeur, everything else is a disappointment. The actors are so gripping, the cinematograpy and editing are handled so brilliantly, it makes one wish all films were as good as this. Gritty, realistic, romantic, poetic...all these things don't even begin to sum up the genius of Melville's masterpiece. Roger Duchesne as Bob le Flambeur is one of the coolest creations in movie history. You'll love this guy...he's a true 'knight errant' as the offical review says.The only complaint I do have is not about the film itself but the subtitles. Whoever did them needs to study their French...I speak both languages and I can tell you the translation is terrible! It doesn't begin to capture the irony or the cool nonchalance of the language- the summing up in simplistic English makes the film seem almost boring. I probably wouldn't have liked it half as much if the subtitles were all I had to go by. Somebody fix this monstrosity!
Rating: 
Summary: COMEDY OF MANNERS WITH MENACE
Review: Essentially a comedy of manners with menace, "Bob the Gambler" or "BOB LE FLAMBEUR" is a great caper film that also heralded the coming French New Wave. The electric, slang-filled French dialogue written by Auguste le Briton ("Rififi") has a rhythm and snap that is nicely mirrored in the cool, slick, sometimes sinister unfolding of the story itself. Unfortunately, the dialogue suffers a little in the not quite spot on English subtitles. Director Jean-Pierre Melville pretty much invented the French crime film. After World War II Melville (real last name Grumbach), made films on a shoestring, on location and without stars. He was alone among all French filmmakers who made pictures entirely on his terms. This 1955 film, with a budget about ten times bigger than a typical French film of its time, is also a loving portrait of Paris and an homage to the noirish American films of the 40s and early 50s. Especially John Huston's "Asphalt Jungle." Roger Duchesne is Bob, a courtly gangster with a natty style not unlike the late mobster kingpin Gotti, who plans on robbing the Deauville casino. But the film is not so much about the details of Bob's one last heist as it is about playing with the genre itself. Bob is a dark knight with a code of loyalty that conflicts with the amorality of his profession just as the filmmaker Melville toys with the makings of a new film tradition. A terrific film that beats the old and new versions of "Ocean's Eleven." This new digital transfer, like all Criterion discs, is superb. Extras include an interview with Daniel Cauchy ("Paulo") and a radio interview with director Melville, who was so enamored of American culture that he took the last name of Moby Dick's author.
Rating:
Summary: The Old Man's Cool . . .
Review: He's vain and he's broke but he looks out for his friends. Yep. It's French film noir yet the protagonist is involved rather than existentially detatched. He's (gasp!) likeable. Which is why the young hood imitates him---they tease him by calling him 'Bob' too---and the cops respect him. Besides he's too busy scraping together gambling money to affect a tough guy persona. He's cool without trying. This one's a gem of stylized realism. Gritty without being grimy. The denizens of Montmatre that inhabit Melville's film may be sewer rats but they behave with panache. They are losers but never bitter. The most hardened yet romantic bunch of bad guys you're ever likely to encounter. The one sour note is what time has done to this film. It has copied it endlessly. Do not be surprised if you feel deja vu when watching it for the first time. It's hard to name all the other flicks have ripped off bits and pieces of the plot throughout the years. What is that saying about the sincerest form of flattery?
Rating:
Summary: A great discovery!
Review: I first saw this movie at a local film festival a year ago and fell in love with it. The characters are fascinating, ones you want to revisit again and again. And what a terrific caper! Isabelle Corey, one of the great but unrecognized beauties of the '50s, is marvelous. It's great to now own this film on DVD. Lots of good extra features, including an audio interview with the director (from 1960) and a brand new filmed interview with one of the stars. If you enjoy film noir and "gangster" films, this French classic is a must.
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Summary: A staggering, hugely influential, one-off.
Review: If 'Bob le Flambeur' is known at all today it is as inspiration for the New Wave, with its cheap location shooting, its cinephilia (especially american) and its dismantling of genre. In this, it is perhaps even more successful than 'A Bout de Souffle' - despite Godard's best efforts, he is defeated by the charisma of his stars. Melville called 'Bob' a 'comedy of manners', and it is much lighter in tone than his later, more famous gangster films. As the title suggests, it is Bob's gambling, rather than criminality, that is important - look at how the circle of the roulette wheel and horses shape the film's imagery and structure. There is a tragic gangster plot, a heist, an Oedipal conflict, but they co-exist with the comedy, a dream modernism and a documentary evocation of 1950s Montmartre (its nightclubs, neon lights and cacophony of sounds (three years before 'Touch of Evil')) and Deauville (its casinos and beaches). This is the sort of movie that will spend ten minutes on a man playing cards, and one on the heist he has spent the whole movie organising.
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Summary: The Essence of Cool Gangster
Review: In P.T. Anderson's commentary for HARD EIGHT, he talks about how this film was a big influence and that he probably owes Melville some money. I'd have to agree. Regardless, this film(and Melville's other films) are just so damn cool I can't blame P.T. This is a very interesting take on a gangster film. Apparently, Melville changed it from more of a heist-focused movie once he saw ASPHLT JUNGLE(Melville had been working on it when John Huston's film came out). Bob is a great character and this is a great dvd! Thanks Criterion(now bring out LE DOULOS andI'll be really happy!)!
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Summary: See This!
Review: Most people reading the reviews I assume already know of the movie and are thinking about buying it because they can't find it or because they've seen it and like it. For those who haven't seen it...do. It's said filmmaker Melville is sort of a grandfather of the French New Wave. But BOB LE FLAMBEUR is more entertaining today than anything Godard or Truffaut ever made. This flick isn't just an exercise in style; sure, it has plenty of that, but it also has a great cast of characters, a good plot, and is just plain fun. In other words, this film isn't a mood movie. It's the real deal. Have fun dropping the title into conversation. Do it slyly and, when someone says they've never seen it or heard of it, act offended. And make sure you say the title with a thick French accent. It's fun! I'm kidding, of course (or am I?). But this is a really good movie!
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Summary: A love letter for Paris!
Review: Since some years ago , Bob , a delinquent in the fifties great amateur to game has been a timeless looser . He meets a teenager just before to fall in prostitution and decides rescue her , he gives some money and receives her in his home . But at once Paulo a orphan and homeless young man will fall in love with her . Very soon he will be inspired for a ambitious plan , and organizes with supreme shyness and coordination every little detail concerned with the master robe but ironically the fate once more makes a raid . the rest runs for your own .
This film constitutes the first policiac title of Jean Pierre Melville and stamps the irruption amazingly mature of a style simply unconfoundable. The firmness of its building and the perfection of its calligraphy are factors which convert it in an self determined entity valuable and bty itself, despite of the relayionship that you can establish with other next work.
Bob le flambeur attends more the instant than the globality , it is much more a cronicle than a spectacularly dramatized account. The movie seems to be made under the fascination of the american cinema . The film gives out a freeing and liberty , such trust in the expressive power of the image , made in equal parts of rules knowing and instint for ignore them . The raccords and the axis are not at all barriers which imprison the narrative freedom .
You will watch a Montmartre flood of heterogeneous night fauna . What Bob experiences in his lucky game was described for Kafka as the most dangerous of the tasks: to remeet and remake oneself in front of a mirror image pierced in a fragment of crystal .
The tragedy is variegated with a comedy patine , which turns in a more real perspective with that life tricks , these unknown crossroads set in the road as an army of naked demons. Undoubtly we are in the presence of a immortal work , timeless and deeply revealer of those times . And notice that Rififi was released the same year too .
The candor of the characters depicted and the soft breeze of a nocturnal Paris with its little madness and and caprices make of this film a supreme jewel and one of the pioneers films of the fifties in all the story of the cinema
Rating:
Summary: Did you used to love movies?
Review: Stay cool is still the main rule. Bob is cool like Serge Gainsbourg is cool.
Like Mitchum.
Like Bogart.
In fact it's a tragedy that Melville never got to make a picture with Mitchum. Bob is who Johnny Depp might get to be when he grows up. Jean-Pierre Melville is the director that the video store clerk aka Q Tarantino has ripped off more times than you have fingers and toes. Camus and Chandler with a camera. Beautifully shot by Henri Decae (not sure on the spelling)whom Wenders hunted down to shoot Wings of Desire. Melville will make you forget everytime Hollywood has broken your movie-loving heart(and taken your...bucks). What could be better than that?
Rating:
Summary: bob le flambeur
Review: The closest thing to a perfect movie that I have ever seen .
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