Synopsis: Big time gambler down on his luck plans to rob a casino
Director: Jean-Pierre Melville
Actors: Robert Duchesne, Isabel Corey, Guy Decomble
Date: 1955
How viewed: Lovefilm online
Rating: 3/5
David Meyer says:
Melville is interested in atmosphere rather than crime, in young lust and old folly, in style and its power.
Melville is interested in atmosphere rather than crime, in young lust and old folly, in style and its power.
I say:
Widely acknowledged as the first French new-wave film and as the inspiration for Ocean's Eleven (without the laughs) this tells the story of Bob, an ex bank robber, who now is addicted to gambling, in the bars and back-rooms of cafes around Pigalle - the Soho of Paris. We join him when things seem to be going badly - but he drives a big American car, and has a swish flat with picture window views over Montmartre so he's clearly had better times! Despite having gone straight for 20 years, being friends with the police, and having a certain code of honour (not lending money to a pimp who's beaten up one of his girls), his eyes light up when he hears that there's 800m (french francs) in the Deauville casino safe the night before the Grand Prix (the big horse race held there). He assembles a gang, and makes detailed plans (I liked the way they draw out the plan of the casino in a field - see photo), but one of the gang tells his girl, who tells another lover, who owes the police a favour, and so grasses, and it ends in a rather hurried and unconvincing shoot-out. Bob, however, as always, emerges smiling. Quite gripping, the scenes of Paris and Deauville are great, and you never know quite how it will end, but would I bother to watch it again? Probably not!
Widely acknowledged as the first French new-wave film and as the inspiration for Ocean's Eleven (without the laughs) this tells the story of Bob, an ex bank robber, who now is addicted to gambling, in the bars and back-rooms of cafes around Pigalle - the Soho of Paris. We join him when things seem to be going badly - but he drives a big American car, and has a swish flat with picture window views over Montmartre so he's clearly had better times! Despite having gone straight for 20 years, being friends with the police, and having a certain code of honour (not lending money to a pimp who's beaten up one of his girls), his eyes light up when he hears that there's 800m (french francs) in the Deauville casino safe the night before the Grand Prix (the big horse race held there). He assembles a gang, and makes detailed plans (I liked the way they draw out the plan of the casino in a field - see photo), but one of the gang tells his girl, who tells another lover, who owes the police a favour, and so grasses, and it ends in a rather hurried and unconvincing shoot-out. Bob, however, as always, emerges smiling. Quite gripping, the scenes of Paris and Deauville are great, and you never know quite how it will end, but would I bother to watch it again? Probably not!
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