085 - Bob le Flambeur, 1956, France. Dir. Jean-Pierre Melville.

Sunday, March 26, 2017

085 - Bob le Flambeur, 1956, France. Dir. Jean-Pierre Melville.

When somebody loves you, it makes it easier to love him or her back.

France has long loved America.

The French Revolution came shortly after the American Revolution.

France adopted the American colors: red, white, and blue became blue, white, and red.

France gave the United States the Statue of Liberty.

The French New Wave (Nouvelle Vague) styled itself after the American movies they discovered when the War was over.

It is a common saying that they love Jerry Lewis in France.

America in return has long loved France.

Everyone dreams of going to Paris.

Hemingway and the ex-patriots set up shop on the west bank of the Seine and created a Romantic dream and made history.

France features prominently in American culture, from An American in Paris (1951) to The Last Time I Saw Paris (1954) to Gigi (1958) to Charade (1963) to Paris When It Sizzles (1964) to How to Steal a Million (1966) to Last Tango in Paris (1972) to Frantic (1988) to Forget Paris (1995) to Before Sunrise (1995) to 2 Days in Paris (2007) to Ratatouille (2007) to Taken (2008) to From Paris with Love (2010) to Hugo (2011) to this past year's best picture La La Land (2016).

And of course Casablanca (1942), an American movie set in French Morocco, with one of the greatest lines (many of the greatest lines) in film history.  "We'll always have Paris."

How many more are there which are not listed here?

Woody Allen made the movie Hollywood Ending (2002), where the film's ending is itself a Hollywood ending, which includes being loved by France and moving to France.

Then he moved to France and made movies there.

He spent a lifetime making movies about Manhattan, yet his greatest hit is Midnight in Paris (2011).

Quentin Tarantino styled himself largely after the Nouvelle Vague (French New Wave), including the naming of his production company A Band Apart, after Jean-Luc Godard's classic French film Bande a part (Band of Outsiders).

We eat French fries.

So how about Jean-Pierre Melville.

Melville loved America.

He named himself after one of America's greatest novelists.  His birth name was Grumbach.  His chosen name was Melville.

He drove American cars, wore American hats, wore Ray-Bans, listened to the Armed Forces Network (AFN), and drank in American music, from big band to jazz.

He loved Glenn Miller.

Bob le Flambeur (1956) is the now fourth film by Jean-Pierre Melville that we have seen.

We saw Leon Morin, Priest (1961) (012, January 12), The Silence of the Sea (Le Silence de la Mer) (1949) (083, March 24), and The Terrible Children (Les Enfants Terribles) (1950) (084, March 25).

But this film is the first film we have seen that feels like a Jean-Pierre Melville movie.

The Terrible Children was a work for hire.  And the other two belong to a trilogy of films about the French Resistance during the War.  We will see the other one, the third in the trilogy, soon.

Melville's bread and butter, his home turf, the world he inhabits, the stuff his dreams are made on, is the French version of the American crime drama.  We will see four more of these kinds of films over the next few days.

They are gritty, taut, and full of tension and release.

Crime drama is genre filmmaking.  It has a vocabulary.  It has elements that recur.  It is a great topic for the movies because the stakes are high and there is great conflict--conflict between the thieves and law enforcement, conflict between the thieves and each other, conflict between the thieves and their women, and inner conflict, within themselves.

These kinds of films never get old to the movie-going public.  They sell tickets because they work.

What kinds of shows are always on television?  Doctors, lawyers, and detectives.  Often with the doctors and lawyers functioning as detectives.  Who dunnit?  Or, we know who dunnit; now, how will they get caught?  Or, will they get caught?

Melville here is four years ahead of the New Wave, and eleven years ahead as a director.

When Truffaut and Godard burst onto the scene like a rocket, they owed everything to Melville.  Whatever they did that was new, he did first.

In fact, Godard owes the launching of his legacy to Melville.  When we get to the film Breathless (1960), we will discover Godard's innovative style that put him on the filmmaking map, making him an international star director.  That style came about when a problem needed to be solved.  The problem was solved for Godard by Melville.

Melville loved cinema.  He loved everything about it.  He watched a lot of movies.  He knew the cinematographers of those movies.  He understood the style of the directors.  He understood the art of the craft.

Because of his love of movies, he was willing to make movies under difficult circumstances, with little money, filming here and there when he could, making choices that would work within his budget.

He took two years to make Bob Le Flambeur.  He would save some money, call the cast and crew, and shoot for three days.  Then he would go back to work finding money.  The cast and crew were loyal to him--because he was loyal to them and because he was passionate about what he was doing.  So they would make other movies in the traditional way and then give two or three days to him when he was filming.  They stuck together until they were finished.

As a result, they made a classic.

There is nothing about Bob le Flambeur that belies that it was made this way.  It seems like a movie with a budget.

Luc Sante in the liner notes notes that while Melville's methods paved the way for the New Wave, he remained at heart a classicist.  Sante says, "Bob le Flambeur may be the most elegantly rigorous movie ever made about a cockeyed heist."

Years later in an interview, Melville would cite at least seven movies that he believed openly plagiarized his, including Ocean's 11, and he states that some even lifted exact lines of dialogue.  When he first wrote the script of Bob le Flambeur, he put more detail into the heist itself.  But before he could make the movie, John Huston came out with The Asphalt Jungle, which did the same thing.  So Melville reduced the heist portion and brought out more of the relationships.  This decision proved to benefit the film.

Bob is a gambler.

Years ago he tried to rob a bank but was caught and sent to jail.  Since then he has laid low.

He once saved the life of a police officer, and now they are friends.  The officer keeps tabs on him to make sure he does not get back into trouble.

Bob is a gentleman.  A cultured man.  A man of honor and principle.

He may be a hood, but he approaches life a certain way.

He lives in a painter's loft with a view of Montmartre in Paris.

He frequents certain restaurants and bars.

He is a man about town.

He hates pimps, and he protects prostitutes, trying to help them escape.

He becomes a father figure to a young man and a daddy figure to a young woman.

The young man loves the young woman.  The young woman laughs at the young man.  He is too sincere for her.  She wants Bob.  He is older, more mature, able to provide her with lifestyle she desires.

Bob cannot shake his vice.

He keeps a coin with him at all times, flipping it to make decisions.

He keeps a slot machine inside his own apartment, and drops a coin every time he enters, always in search of those three lemons, those three cherries.

In one day he will win big at the horse track and then lose it all at the card table.

This will lead to his being tempted to make just one more robbery, just one more play.

He assembles his team, pays a croupier for floor plans of the casino, installs a copy of the safe for his safecracker to practice on, lays out the entire floor plan of the casino in an open field so that the men can practice.

The big score will take place at Deauville.

Bob will be the lookout man.  He will stand at the gaming tables and pretend to gamble.

He will decide whether to move forward or call it off.

But some people just cannot keep their mouths shut.

The young man, his protégé, so sincere in trying to win the young woman's heart, promises her the moon when he scores big.

The young woman, clueless in her confidence, relays the news to the pimp.

The pimp has already promised the police he will give them a lead in order to get himself out of a jam.  Now a lead has fallen into his lap.

If that were not enough, the croupier tells his wife and she gets greedy.  They will turn on Bob, turn him in, and keep the dough for themselves.

Greed sure does have a way of getting in the way of a big score.

With so many people talking to so many people, things just might not turn out the way they planned it.

And to top things off, Bob, will standing guard, pretending to gamble, will really gamble--after all he cannot help himself--and will have the biggest winning streak of his life.

He could call of the entire thing.

And walk away with the casinos money anyway.

Having earned it.

But will he see it in time?