Melding the toughness of American gangster films with Gallic sophistication, in this underworld comedy of manners an ageing gambler navigates the treacherous world of pimps, moneymen, and naive associates whilst plotting one last score—the heist of a Paris casino.

Bob the Gambler (Roger Duchesne) is reverting to his old trade as a bank robber after several bad rolls of the dice. But his daring plans to rip off the Deauville casino are thrown into chaos by his passion for gambling, a young woman, an unforeseen murder and the duplicitous scheming of his criminal colleagues.

Suffused with wry humour and beautifully shot by Henri Decaë, Melville’s influential gangster flick was a love letter to Paris and Montmarte and his first foray into the stylised underworld which became his signature. If Melville was the father of the French New Wave, then Bob le Flambeur was its first film - its DIY street scenes and jump cuts, laying the road map to the movements’ freewheeling aesthetic. And if La Nouvele Vague was the product of French reinvention of American cinema, Melville’s affectionate nod here to Hollywood heist movies like The Asphalt Jungle, showed he was the first of the subsequent wave of influential French directors to claim America for his own.

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