4K ULTRA HD REVIEWS / SDR SCREENSHOTS
“Bob le flambeur”- Roger Duchesne stars as ex-gangster Bob Montagné, who wins big at the track, loses it all at the roulette table, then hatches a plan to rob a casino.
“Le doulos”- Serge Reggiani, left, plays burglar Maurice Faugel, who, after being released from prison, connects with jewelry fence Gilbert Vanovre (René Lefèvre).
(Click an image to scroll the larger versions)
“BOB LE FLAMBEUR”
4K Ultra HD & Blu-ray, 1956, French with English subtitles, unrated, mild violence, brief nudity
Best extra: The 2019 commentary by critic Nick Pinkerton
“LE DOULOS”
4K Ultra HD & Blu-ray, 1962, French with English subtitles, unrated, violence, brief nudity
Best extra: The commentary by writer/editor Samm Deighan, also from 2019
IF YOU’RE unfamiliar with Jean-Pierre Melville, you’re in luck. These template-setting crime films, new to Kino Lorber’s Studio Classics collection, are the perfect introduction.
And if you are familiar with the influential director and writer – “Bob” opened the door to the French New Wave – you’re in luck, too. Restored in native 4K from StudioCanal’s lauded 2019 4K masters, both look splendid. It’s not going out on a limb to say that they’ve never looked better, and probably never will.
First, a little background.
Melville was enamored with American film noir of the ‘30s and ‘40s, and with American culture in general, so much so that, born Jean-Pierre Grumbach, he changed his last name to that of his favorite author. His characters wore trench coats and drove big U.S. cars, but the films weren’t Hollywood copies. As writer/editor Samm Deighan points out in her commentary for “Le doulos,” they were hybrids of French and American influences – and undeniably cool in the Gallic sense of the word.
(1&2) Jean-Pierre Melville established the template for the French New Wave with “Bob le Flameur,” which opened in the States in 1959. (3&4) Bob begins planning the casino heist then is picked up by his old friend Le commissaire Ledru (Guy Decomble). (5) He caps the long evening with a few hands of cards.
In his commentary for “Bob le flambeur (the gambler),” critic Nick Pinkerton says that the film, Melville’s fourth feature, established several characteristics for which he would become famous: its underworld milieu and pervasive undertone of melancholia, a fixation on betrayal as a basic human motivation, and “solitary antagonists who are both monomaniacally fixated on their criminal vocation and philosophically detached from the world around them.”
Melville tapped those same attributes in his later works, classics that include “Léon Morin, prêtre,” “Le doulos,” “Le samouraï” and “Le cercle rouge,” both starring the late, great Alain Delon, and “Army of Shadows.”
And all of his films, regardless of the genre, share a post-World War II nihilism that came from Melville’s experience fighting with La Résistance, Deighan says. “They exist in this noirish wasteland.”
“Bob,” which Melvin wrote with Auguste Le Breton (“Rififi”), is pretty straightforward. Roger Duchesne (“Tempête sur l’Asie”) stars as Bob Montagné, “a Montmartre legend whose style was so cool, whose honor was so strong, whose gambling was so hopeless, that even the cops liked him” (thank you, Roger Ebert). When the movie opens, he wins big at the track then loses it all at the roulette wheel. Nearly broke, he hatches a plan to rob a casino – against the counsel of his friend Ledru (Guy Decomble), a police commissaire whose life Bob saved years before. It all unfolds according to that plan, too, until Bob sits down at a gaming table.
More? Sorry, but your friends at High-Def Watch don’t like spoilers. How about this? Melville ends it with a twist.
(1&2) Isabelle Corey is the young streetwalker Anne. Bob takes her under his wing. (3) Bob meets with the wealthy businessman McKimmie (Howard Vernon) to discuss financing the operation. (4) The streets of Paris pulsate thanks to cinematographer Henri Ducaë. (5) The gang heads toward the casino.
Adapted by Melville from the novel by Pierre Lesou, “Le doulos” was his second collaboration with the late, great Jean-Paul Belmondo, who epitomized “cool” in Jean-Luc Godard’s “Breathless.” He plays Silien, a stone-faced gangster who may have ratted on his friend Faugel (Serge Reggiani, “The Leopard”), just released from prison and determined to settle a score. “Doulos” has a double meaning: It refers to the hat criminals wore to obscure their faces and is slang for an informant. Likewise, appearances can be deceiving, Deighan says in pointing to the story’s delicious complexity.
“We don’t know what’s being presented to us in a visual sense or the story or even in terms of the dialogue,” she says. “It’s the grand thesis of all of Melville’s crime films.”
Sure, we could spill more, but you already know that’s not how your friends at HDW roll. How about this? Quentin Tarantino, who lists “Le doulos” among his favorite films, lifted its ending for “Reservoir Dogs.”
(1&2)“Le doulos,” a favorite of Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino, stars Serge Reggiani as the recently paroled burglar Maurice Faugel. Broken mirrors were a Melville motif. (3-5) Faugel meets with then guns down the fence Gilbert Vanovre (René Lefèvre), who murdered Faugel’s friend.
VIDEO/AUDIO
As noted at the top, both films look fantastic. Shot in the streets of Paris, often on a bicycle with a handheld camera, by Melville favorite Henri Decaë, “Bob le flambeur” (1.37: 1 aspect ratio) simply defies its age. Detail is almost otherworldly and the resolution and natural film grain are exceptional. Same goes for “Le doulos” (1.66: 1), the handiwork of Nicolas Hayer (Henri-Georges Clouzot’s “The Raven”). If the mostly natural lighting and impossibly deep shadows were any sharper, they’d be lethal.
Both films were also encoded onto 100 GB disc for the highest video bitrate possible. The only dings: They were graded in standard dynamic range and “Le doulos” has a slight moiré pattern within the film-grain structure.
The audio on both stand out, too, even though it gets boxy in places. That’s no surprise given the films’ vintage. Still, the hushed dialogue is clear, the gunplay and sounds of the street are solid, and the scores by Eddie Barclay/Jo Boyer (“Bob”) and Paul Misraki’s (“Le doulos”) jazzy music shows off surprising breadth and depth.
EXTRAS
All of them have been picked up from Kino Lorber’s 2019 release and include the documentaries “Diary of a Villain” on “Bob le flambeur” and “Birth of the Detective Story Melville Style” on “Le doulos.” There’s also an interview on the latter with First Assistant Director Volker Schlöndorff in which he recalls working with Melville.
As for the commentaries, Pinkerton often comes off as a play-by-play announcer, but his insights are revealing and there’s no question that he know his way around the fabled City of Lights. Deighan knows her subject, too, and her insights are no less revealing. Call it a tie: You can’t go wrong with either.
– Craig Shapiro
(1) After killing Gilbert Vanovre, Faugel hides out at Thérèse apartment and confers with Jean (Philippe March). (2) The late, great Jean-Paul Belmondo is the suspected rat Silien. “Le doulos” was his second collaboration with Melville. (3) Monique Hennessy is the back-stabbing Thérèse. (4)The robbery is botched when the police arrive and Faugel’s partner Remy (Philippe Nahon) is killed. (5&6) Le commissaire Clain (Jean Desailly, back seat) and his lieutenants scour the streets searching for Faugel.
Comments