JEAN-PIERRE MELVILLE
Director
His first detective film shot between Paris and Deauville
After having directed several literary adaptations(The Silence of the Sea, The Terrible Children...), Jean-Pierre Melville (1917-1973), fascinated by the American film noir of the 1940s and 1950s, turned to crime films, of which he quickly became a reference. Bob le Flambeur, his first crime film, was shot in July 1955 in Paris and Deauville. After a few exterior shots showing the arrival at the casino, most of the scenes were shot in the casino, in the gaming rooms and in the back square. In his office, François André, the great director of the Hotels and Casino of Deauville, briefly plays himself.
" Melville was an admirer of Huston, Wise and Welles, but he already had his own style. The film suffers a little from the weight of years. It's a bit conventional, theatrical, solemn, but it opens his series of films noirs, which make Melville a cult director. Quentin Tarantino, John Woo or Joel Cohen claim to be his directors, even though they don't have the same style, but they have taken his lonely characters and turned them into ancient heroes. Philippe Huet, writer, journalist, author of black novels, came to comment on the screening of the film in Deauville.
