Bob le Flambeur: a classic film deserves another look

Bob le Flambeur, originally released in 1955, has been exhumed from the American Film Institute (AFI) archives and is now playing at the new AFI Silver Theatre. While slightly dated, its antiquity seems fresh alongside the over produced-explosion fests and crude humor flicks that have become today's standard. It, like all classic noir films (though this is generally considered post-noir), drips with style: a sort of elegant decadence filled with romanticized mobsters, dames high off ennui, and a jazz combo in every club. But unlike the bleak, hardboiled plots of Daschle Hammet and Raymond Chandler, Bob le Flambeur is uplifting.

"Le Flambeur" translates to "high roller," which is exactly what Bob (Roger Duchesne) is: a gambler. His past is somewhat unsavory, but he has "cleaned up" since saving the life of the chief of Police. Now he supports himself through gambling, but recently his luck has run dry. His nice apartment and convertible wrap him in respectability; he is the guy people come to for help. But he has scruples, and when a man asks for money to skip town after beating his wife Bob angrily refuses. He takes the blithe, gorgeous Anne (Isabelle Corey) off the streets and lets her sleep in his apartment, never touching her.

But a professional gambler without luck is a man without income, and so Bob becomes desperate. Unable to quit while he is ahead, ultimately losing all his cash, Bob pounces on a comment said in passing. His friend muses about just how much the Deauville, a large, opulent casino, must have in its safe. And the old Bob gets a gleam in his eye, and then it becomes an Ocean's 11 style heist. First the toughs are assembled, each with their strengths and caveats. Then the inside man is coerced to get the info and the rich old guy is found to front the money. Bob gives up gambling for the meanwhile and "everything is going according to plan."

Then of course, information leaks out, first through the untrustworthy inside man and his domineering wife. Then Paulo (Daniel Cauchy), Bob's young protégé, boasts to his new girlfriend Anne (yes that same Anne) of the planned theft. She tells the town-skipping-wife-beater, who has, in exchange for his freedom, become a police informer. So in classic Dickensian coincidence everything converges on the final conflict.

But beside the pinstripes and highballs is a kind of beauty in craft. The shots are unobtrusive and efficient. The music is effective, not hokey like many old films. And unlike every other Bogart film, the sun actually comes out. There isn't this oppressively dank and sinister quality like so many other noirs. This is a film that takes its sweet, sweet time, spending 10 min. on practicing the combinations for the safe. And then the hypnotic gambling sequence toward the end that one cannot help but smile at. This is a film with class, of a breed sorely missed today.