Film Review
It was the success of Jacques Becker's
Touchez pas au grisbi (1954)
and Jules Dassin's
Du rififi chez les hommes
(1955) which brought a new impetus to the old-fashioned gangster film
and established the policier as one of the major genres of French
cinema in the mid-1950s.
The popularity of such films was in part
down to the pro-American sentiment that had taken hold of France in the
years following the Liberation. The United States was seen as a
model of modernity and its values and culture were eagerly embraced by
a nation that was keen to put its recent past behind it. How else
can we account for the success of Eddie Constantine and his low-grade
American-style potboilers -
La Môme vert-de-gris
(1953),
Cet homme est dangereux (1953),
etc. - which French cinema audiences lapped up like starving puppies?
One particular devotee of American culture was the independent
filmmaker Jean-Pierre Melville - the fact that he adopted the surname
Melville (after the author of
Moby Dick) testifies to the extent of his
amour fou for all things made
in the USA. Melville already had three features under his belt by
the time he came to make his first foray into
le Milieu (the world of organised
crime).
Bob le Flambeur
would be nothing less than a full-blown homage to the American gangster
heist movie, but one with a distinctly Gallic feel, owing to its
location in Paris's shady Pigalle district and the playboy's
home-from-home, Deauville.
The first of Melville's seductively stylish gangster films,
Bob le flambeur introduces themes
that the director world return to time and again in his subsequent
work. These include: the notion of honour amongst thieves, the
futility of effort (a metaphor for man's inability to cheat death) and
the lack of clear moral boundaries between the lawmakers and
law-breakers. Far from being a mere imitation of their American
counterparts, Melville's gangster films are distinctive works of cinema
art in their own right and explore the complexities of existence and
relationships with a discerning eye and a uniquely cynical
temperament. What most characterises the heroes of Melville's
films is their propensity for failure. They may
be brave, intelligent and resolute, but success will always elude them.
It is as if they are automata or pieces on a chessboard, guided
by an unseen hand to perform
an intricate dance that leads inevitably to disaster.
Conventional notions of good and evil are irrelevant in Melville's cold
male-dominated universe. What matters is that whoever you are -
crook or cop - you adhere to the moral code you have chosen. The
lessons that Jean-Pierre Melville had learned whilst working for the
French Resistance during WWII would stay with him and impinge massively
on his cinema.
Honneur et
fidélité was as much Melville's watchword
as it was the Foreign Legion's.
In writing the screenplay, Melville opted to work with one of France's
best-known crime writers, Auguste Le Breton. The latter's
firsthand familiarity with the Parisian underworld allowed him to bring
a chilling authenticity to his novels, many of which have been
adapted for cinema, including
Du
rififi chez les hommes and
Le
Clan des Siciliens. For the lead role, Melville cast Roger
Duchesne, his first screen role in over a decade. Duchesne had
been a prolific supporting actor in the 1930s but his career was
derailed in the mid-1940s after he was accused of collaborating with
the Nazis during the Occupation. With his implacable features,
steely eyes and elegant bearing, Duchesne proved to be an inspired
casting choice and served as the template for the main protagonists of
Melville's subsequent gangster films, notably the sinisterly taciturn Jef
Costello (played to perfection by Alain Delon) in
Le
Samourai (1967).
Although
Bob le Flambeur was
not a great commercial success on its first release, it was favourably
reviewed by some critics (including a young firebrand named Claude
Chabrol) and would have an immense impact on French cinema in the
decade that followed. Several directors of the French New Wave
were greatly in awe of Melville and sought his advice when making their
first films. Today,
Bob le
Flambeur is not only rated an important example of French film
noir (remade as
The Good Thief
in 2002 by the Irish filmmaker Neil Jordan), it is also considered an
essential precursor to the French New Wave, establishing an aesthetic
and a way of filmmaking that a new generation of filmmaker was eager to
embrace. Jean-Luc Godard's debut feature
À
bout de souffle (1960) owes much to this film - not only did
Godard include several overt references to it, he also gave Melville a
role in the film, acknowledging the debt that the Nouvelle Vague owed
to the director of
Bob le
flambeur.
A fiercely independent filmmaker, Jean-Pierre Melville revelled in his
maverick status, but the downside was he often found it extremely
difficult to finance his films.
Bob
le Flambeur was made on a particularly tight budget, so tight in
fact that Melville rarely had enough money to shoot for more than a few
days at a time. Most of the two years he committed to making the
film were spent trying to scrape together enough ready cash so he could
pay his cast and crew their paltry fee. It was the lack of
resources and Melville's complete control over every aspect of the
production that earned him the reputation of the auteur godfather and
allowed him to originate a filmmaking approach that would radically and
irreversibly alter the character of French cinema by the end of the
decade.
Another instrumental player in this cinematic upheaval was Melville's
cinematographer of choice, Henri Decaë, who had previously
collaborated with Melville on
Le Silence de la Mer (1949) and
Les Enfants terribles
(1950). Decaë's use of natural lighting and the handheld
camera were highly innovative at the time and are what give
Bob le flambeur its elegant
modernity and near-documentary realism. It is no accident that
Decaë's services would be highly sought after by the emerging
directors of the French New Wave. François Truffaut,
Claude Chabrol and Louis Malle all chose Decaë to photograph their
first features -
Les 400 coups (1959),
Le
Beau Serge (1958) and
Ascenseur pour l'échafaud
(1958) - thereby bringing a distinctive yet consistent style to the
early films of the Nouvelle Vague. On
Bob le flambeur, Decaë (guided
by Melville) took his inspiration from American film noir - particularly recent examples
such as John Huston's
The Asphalt Jungle (1950). This is perhaps
most evident in the jazz-scored neon-lit exterior sequences, which
reek of ill-gotten affluence and sordid vice. If it weren't for
the recognisable Parisian landmarks and the fact that everyone speaks
French, you could easily convince yourself that
Bob le flambeur is a pukka
American film noir - and a very respectable one at that.
© James Travers 2001
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Next Jean-Pierre Melville film:
Deux hommes dans Manhattan (1959)