Bob the Gambler

It can have whatever blend it wants between American and European styles, and it can have elements of film noir, but this film didn't really entertain me much. I simply found the story quite boring and lacking in suspense. The camera work is interesting and clean, but as a whole, it just didn't work for me. Maybe it was the setting that bothered me. (12/28/2014)

Jean-Pierre Melville represented the peak of commercial cinema in the 1950s and belonged to the top ranks of post-war French cinema. He admired American genre films, especially film noir and gangster films, and that is strongly evident in Bob the Gambler. Long shots, the atmosphere of nighttime Paris, and strange figures from the underworld, criminals who feel each other out and contemplate their next career moves. The film definitely does not fit into the action category, as it rather focuses on the psychology of its characters and the final heist is certainly not the climax of the film, where it's more about the characters and style. Although cinema today has a completely different pace and is accustomed to much more bombastic and sophisticated genre pieces, at the time, Bob the Gambler was very much an above-average European genre film. It's quite nice to watch a director with a strong and distinct signature, who knows what he wants to shoot and in what way. Overall impression: 75%. (05/11/2013)