A History lesson in more ways than one.(1)

 

Author: johnnyboyz (j_l_h_m@yahoo.co.uk) from Hampshire, England

17 September 2007

It's probably common practice to brush aside films that were once made before a country really had a 'boom' in terms of coming up with their own film form or film movement. Bob the Gambler was made in the mid 1950s, a few years before Goddard amongst a few others devised the French New Wave and made it popular with films like The 400 Blows and Goddard's own Breathless. You can take numerous examples from down the decades: Does any one remember or still watch any German films before their Expressionism movement in the 1920s? What about Italian film before the 1940s or Danish films before the Dogme '95 movement? This is where Bob the Gambler is living proof that it hasn't aged that badly as we (or at least I'm) still stumbling across pre-film movement films and enjoying them for what they are.

 

It's not just Bob the Gambler that is an example of French film and how pre-new wave French film has survived; a lot of the Lumière brothers films should be the first point of call for someone wondering where film and cinema came from; the answer is of course the French. Bob the Gambler as a film is just simply fascinating–its look, its use of locations and its actual narrative just ooze class. Melville uses a very clever technique to introduce not just the characters and the setting but also the film as a whole without even touching on the story.

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This is done through the opening thirty or so minutes which just consists of character interaction as we discover what types of people these characters are and any other necessary information about pasts or whatever is delivered to us through dialogue. We discover a bit about Bob and his relation to the police as well as a bit on the shady past of the character of Paolo who will contribute to the plot later on since he works at the casino.