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And that's one thing that I love about it that you can't escape fight in this film. And fight seems to be represented by that enormous Illuminated Building just completely. Casting its masses shadow over the film. I think this was the second Melville film I ever saw. I remember just being so gitty when I found a copy of they do low at a blockbuster in self-field Michigan, and I don't remember where I found Bobabbe.
And this was obviously during the time when it was really difficult to find these films. And you were just kind of lucky if you were able to locate any of them. I found it very interesting going through all of the old clippings and seeing that Bob was re-released in the early 80s, mid-90s. And even I want to say 2001. Just these periods of time, it was almost like cutting down a train, looking at the rings, by looking at the dates on these articles.
Because it was just suddenly all of these articles were being written all at the same time. And it was there was one that was part of a bigger Melville show, a whole series of his 13 films. And then other times it was just Bob being re-released. So I don't know if I'd heard of it during that time. But obviously it was getting familiar with Melville after I saw that do though. The thing that I loved about this movie, and I'll just put it out there right now.
I was a huge train of refee fee and a big fan of some other French crying films. And this one being a heist film that doesn't have a heist is one of the best things ever. And I love how Melville almost literally takes us by the hand. We are him doing the voiceover of this film, him introducing things, him really playing with cinema. And just like how he comes on, it's like this is the story of an like Bob LaFlame Bear. The title card comes up and all the credits.
And just he'll interject himself just at the right time. So especially the beginning where he's talking about how Mel Marck represents heaven with the Sacrica and then he shows the vernacular and the music just descends. And then he talks about in hell. And then we see all the pagal. Bob is there in both worlds. He's constantly going from hell of pagal up to the heaven of his apartment. So much of this movie takes place at Bob's apartment.
And so much of it is crucial to Bob's apartment, especially when it comes to the relationship he has with Anne and Paolo and being a very young prostitute and Paolo being his protege. And I think at one point they say that Bob used to work with his father and when his father died Bob kind of took Paolo under his wing. And it's this whole thing of loyalty.
I mean, the things that we talked about last year or two years ago, whenever we talked about the circle Rouge last year, we talked about they do the two years ago. All of these, the rules and the nobility of the criminals. I mean, that really starts in this movie. New really gets to see the seeds of those later films in this one. It feels almost more like his early melodramas. Like it's it's not even just a heist film without a heist. It's like an anti-heist film.
It's like he clearly spends so much more of the narrative focus exploring Montmartre and these characters and their relationships to each other. And I don't know if you remember this. But when you and I first sort of became friends online, it was around this period where I had seen Bob LaFlumber because I think I got the disc during that great sort of Netflix disc rental period. And I had seen that. I saw LaSemara and I decided, okay, I'm going to watch every single one of these films.
And I sort of did kind of a version of what Andrew did. And instead of like strictly working in reverse order, I basically just watched all the films I could easily find. I was early melodramas are still not very accessible. And Mike, I don't know if you remember this, but you helped me find when you read this letter, which it was impossible to find at the time.
But I think because that comes so close to Bob LaFlumber, it feels like this very strange, unexpected kind of bridge between that more traditional French melodrama and the crime films that he would make after this. So it's always such a surprise showing the city people for the first time.
It's such a movie about relationships and just the way that Bob has, basically as two children between Anne and Paolo, the way that he protects both of them, the relationship he has with his friend, Broger, the relationship that he has with the police inspector, LaDru.
I mean, this is that first time that we get to see that relationship between the cop and the robber, and I'm a huge fan of John Wu and so seeing this and seeing, you know, being a fan of the killer and I'm just like, oh, this is the origin. This is where we're seeing this stuff. And I absolutely love that. That was this whole thing where I think LaDru says, oh, a guy had a gun on me and Bob moved to his hand.
Maybe he was doing it so that the guy didn't go to prison for life or maybe he did it out of the goodness of his heart. I don't know. And you don't know about Bob and you don't know where he's coming from all the time, but you hope and wish for the best for him. You just feel like he's this kind of night errand and is on the right, even though he's horribly addicted to gambling, loses everything throughout the film, gains it back, loses it again.
I mean, it's really awful to see just how gambling has such a hold on this poor guy. But that's his whole thing in this fickle finger of faith and just how luck either is with him or not with him and does he make his own luck? I'm not sure. Yeah, I think the entire film is always constructed like a game of roulette because we keep going back to that roulette wheel and the ball dropping seemingly at random into the various numbers.
And I think that's the feeling that you do get from the film that the whole thing is is a game and it's being decided by forces larger than Bob. The other thing that I really get from the film is the key to understanding Melville's universe is realizing that this is all about pre-war Paris. And in Melville's film universe, you have pre-war France and then you have what happens during the war and the repercussions of World War II.
And World War II is such a rupture within this universe that it completely upends the noble order of things. And so Bob being this creature of that pre-war, noble universe, he experiences that betrayal, the rupture in the order when he is betrayed by his compatriots. And it is certainly betrayed by the girl that he loves and protects. Seemingly as a daughter but I suspect that he does have feelings for a role in Melville actually says in Melville on Melville, he was in the love with the goal.
So I think this feeling of being betrayed is part of the division of pre-war and/postwar France that Melville is almost fetishistically trying to create within his crime films. And also within his World War II films. Everyone is potentially a member of the Gestapo. Everyone is potentially out to sell them out to the secret police. The chief of police paradoxically here is also part of that previous order and there is that beautiful relationship between the two.
The only pre-war France would have been able to maintain. That's one of the things that really drew me to his films early on is they have this sense of being very like set in a specific time period in some ways because of the costumes and the cars and the style but also having the sense of being very kind of out of time if you have directors who make period piece films.
It's like I've seen some critics try to argue that some of Melville's films are like that but it's exactly what you're saying I think. It's like he's setting them in this fantasy version of the past that's not the real past.
It's this like ideal that he has in his head especially in terms of these masculine values of honor and how how loyal are you and what are your morals and it's obvious I think with this film more than any other that he made after the way that he really idealizes what Bob represents is just this like universally beloved guy.
Those early scenes almost remind me of like Disney's beauty in the beast where she walks down the street and everyone says hello to her and it's like every every place Bob goes everyone's so excited to see him. It's like how often do you see characters that are that sort of whimsical in gangster movies? Absolutely and at it he is a construct. Just as a pig out in Bob LaFlanbert is a construct it.
It exists somewhere in a kind of filmic Twilight world that's partly Melville's own past and also a pagal that's been filtered through this fetishistic obsession with Hollywood and specifically pre-war Hollywood. Bob is an architect. He may have reminded Melville of the kind of characters from the demimond that he would have grown up next to in the 20s and 30s. That he's also a Hollywood hero wearing a Hollywood style trench coat and hat.
He would fit right into some of the earlier gangster films that were coming out of Hollywood to your point. I mean there are so many feelers that go back into John Houston CSV Joe Gole. Melville's pretty open about how much he loved that film and how much that film influenced this film. But it is so vastly different. I mean especially yet the end of it. Both of them end a little bad. This is somewhat film-nourished but yes, all jungles ending will just curve the higher out of you.
Where is this one? An end on a joke which is fantastic and you never know where it's going to go even though they could try to tell us what happened with Bob when we come to Broughless in a few years. Yeah, I thought that guy. Rather just think of Bob getting that good lawyer and suing for damages and getting away with like the $100 million of Franks. That's fantastic. But yeah this whole idea of Bob being this film or character. I mean you're right.
They even make a reference about how Bob looks like a Hollywood gangster and then it's like, oh, well Hollywood gangsters are actually based on French gangsters instead. It's like, okay sure, but Melville loves American films. Love American cars. Bob loves American cars. I'm surprised Bob doesn't wear the same kind of stats in cowboy hat that Melville did. But there are a lot of similarities between Bob and Melville and this whole love of the milieu is definitely one of them.
But to Andrew's point, I think Bob definitely, even though he has these similarities to Melville and some degree, Bob does experience that betrayal. But he's definitely this kind of pre world war to character who doesn't have that kind of like violence and darkness that I think Melville had because of his experiences in the resistance and that all of his characters after Bob will flimper have.
He has this like, even though the film does have all of these more downbeat notes in the second half, Bob just has this kind of like lightness and resilience that makes the ending kind of confusing because it seems like it should it should feel like a happy ending. Like he's probably not going to go to jail. He won all this money and they didn't even have to rob the casino. But at the same time, it doesn't. It's like very mixed emotions throughout.
When you're wondering why is he even going to have with the robbery when he knows I mean, he's getting betrayed multiple times and he knows he's getting betrayed. He's got Paolo who spills the beans to Anne because he's trying to impress her. She spills the beans to what's the guy's name. Mark the Pimp and then Mark is on the hook with the ledrew to give him something otherwise he's going to get arrested or kicked out of free and type of thing.
There is that going on and plus there's the other betrayal which is the groupier and his wife has very harpy of a wife who's just like we need more money. You need to get us more money or else we're going to tell the cops. And so after the dru gets any year for all from Mark, he then gets an ear full from the group years wife and it's like, okay, wow, and Bob is well aware at one point that there was this betrayal of Paolo to Anne to Mark.
He's that sheriff Mark went to the dru and I, but it's enough that he should just call the whole thing. But he's a gambler, you know, he's Bob La Flumber, not Bob La Extremely careful. It's in his DNA to roll the dice or spin the roulette wheel in this case and take that else about gamble to see if he can get away with it.
I think that was the whole point of it all to see if his gamble pays off and paradoxically wins all that money and then emerges in the middle of a gunfight completely unscathed. I mean, it seems like the gambling gods were smiling upon him. Maybe not completely in a grants with him, but he does manage to slide through magically, I think. And there's the magic of the self, you know.
You made this point earlier about how there's this issue of sort of fate always winning out, especially in Melville's later films where fate seems particularly angry. But here, the story does go through those beats that you described of, you know, we see him winning some money and losing some money and it's just this constant up and down.
But it seems like, like, the more times I watch this, it seems like that's what Bob wants is he wants that kind of instability and unpredictability and that's what's exciting to him about life is sort of he has this Montmartre Pigalt ecosystem where there is this moral code and if you don't follow the moral code, you get shot at the end of the film. But it's like that quality of things being up and down.
It's not as tragic as I think it feels in maybe later Hollywood movies where you see people, you know, in something like Leeman Las Vegas where there's all this kind of gambling and drinking excess. Would you be con in the gambler? That's another right sort of fatal state. But here you get this sense that like it's not as fatalistic because he has this community to support him and he supports other people within it.
And I think maybe that's what gives it that sort of free war kind of wholesomeness. There's a very innocent quality about it despite the fact that he's a hard boy, it holds hard bit in gambler. There's magic around him. He's kind of like the snow white sprinkling pixie dust on everyone in pick out. Well yeah, when you find out that the bartender that she had this dream of opening up a bar and he's the one that's staked her and it feels like he doesn't want anything back by that.
He just wanted to out and he just feels yeah super magnanimous. It doesn't feel like he's there conniving and we delaying and saying, oh, if I do this for you, you do this for me. Yes, magnanimous is the right word for him. He is this saint of peagal that he is there to experience fate at every turn, go to the horse races and win big and William of Orange or whatever it is. The prince of orange.
And then go to my to car, though, and then lose the whole thing just in an afternoon, he can go from riches to absolute destitution just in an afternoon and it's unusual for him to be out during the daytime. He's almost a little bit of a vampire in this film with the way that he is only going around at night.
I love that at the beginning when they show and versus the cleaning woman and how it's the soul thing of like, you know, and stays wrapping up while the cleaning lady is just beginning and that they kind of cross paths there in peagal and it's very much like everybody else is waking up and Bob's finally going to bed because he's all night just gambling going from game to game to game to game.
At the beginning of the episode when Andrew mentioned that he is in an Australian time zone and is calling in at 6 am, it made me think like, oh, this is around the time on Bob will be getting home from death. That's what I've been doing all night. My God, by the way, does anyone got to spare 20 bucks? They might be able to lend me. We keep talking about fate. We haven't brought up God at all.
Sacrificor being there is very, very God like, but I'm very surprised that when it comes to there's an amazing shot of Bob making a decision, you know, kind of flipping as is to you headed coin where he's making a decision whether drink coffee or conyac and I've found interesting that Melville doesn't give us a quote unquote God's eye view of him that it's a little bit more like upper and over the shoulder shot of him making that decision because
that could really see him going all out and being like, here, let me give you the God's eye view over this whole set and having Bob making this like walking to one and then walking to the other and then finally going for the conyac like he should. But yeah, I was glad that he wasn't as literal as that. I don't know if it's just that the studio that he had that he was shooting this in went up, have allowed for that.
But I think Melville would have could have and would have done whatever the fucking one. And that's always the thing with Melville. Even in this early stage of his work where it feels, he was very rough. This feels almost like proto new wave to me and I love it though. I love that it has that feel to it that it feels like what you guys are trying to do and like a few years here. Melville's already doing this stuff right now. But I don't think you get a God's eye view.
You get a Bob's eye point of view. It slightly above Bob and Bob flipping it to side to coin means I think literally that he is the ultimately the master of his own fight. You find out at the very end that the coin that he uses it has the same thing on both sides, which I think really underscores that the final note is he is master of his own fate. He's making it himself. And so if it has its ups and downs, that's something he desires.
And this relationship with Roger, Roger just is going along with him the entire time what he does make all of these bets on a coin. And I just like, you know, oh, I knew that was a too high-ded coin all this time. And then Bob coming back with, well, I knew you knew that it was a too high-ded coin all this time. It's like what a swap motherfucker. Jumping briefly back to your point about the new wave.
When I was watching Bob yet again this morning, I was thinking about Melville's use of his own voice for the voice over narration. That must be where God got it from because he does it from his very first short films. And it's crazy to think that like basically without this film, you, I think would get a very different new wave because it seems like they're just pulling directly from him.
Well, yeah, I didn't realize how other filmmakers like I knew that Melville showed up in breathless and him doing that whole thing of, uh, I want to become a mortal that died. You know, that's so good. But I forgot that he was in a Chevrolet film and did he have something to do with true foe as well or am I just making that up? I don't think so.
I knew that he knew or he knew all of them because of their early connection to the cinema clubs because they all started reviewing films and we're all big fans of his movies. But I know that I also know that pretty early into good darts career. Melville was like whatever you're doing is bullshit and they stopped being friends.
I suspect that all of those guys who became a new wave and we can never include Melville in any sort of club because Melville was just out there on his own and refused to join, you know, any club that wanted him as a member.
You know, I think that those guys all had the same sort of love hate relationship as they did with American pop culture in general and, you know, the conventional cinema of the US, the genres that they were riffing on and the films that Melville deliberately embraced, you know, they would have had a problematic relationship with those because they're simultaneously trying to embrace them and also debase them. And I think they did that with Melville as well.
They would cite him as an influence and then tear strips off his new film and say, "Oh, how bourgeois, how disgustingly pro-American pro Hollywood?" Yeah, I think Melville occupied that really sort of a thorny ground between the new wave and the Hollywood establishment. And also the French film establishment that would have been seen as collaborators with the dreaded Americans. I think what I was thinking of was that he was in a Romero film saying that the lion. Also, so was Godar, so was Renee.
So there were a lot of other folks in that one with him. But that's what I was thinking. It wasn't the trifo. I think the trifo connection is that the guy that plays La Druu ends up going in being in the 400 blows. I think that's as close as we got with that. I love the Druu. I absolutely love the Druu. I love his attitude. I love the guys. Face. He's one of these great, great faces that we have. I mean, you talk a little bit about the Albino, Brian Ferry look of Bob.
All of these people have these great, great faces in here. And this is it was so nice to see. And I swear that Bob has a little bit of a Jean-Gabin look to him, but much more lean and hungry than Gabin had looked in a while. He definitely has a sort of classier edge. Like earlier when you were talking about how you were surprised that Melville didn't put him in one of those stats and hats, which he loved.
And I just can imagine that happening because Bob has this very specifically kind of old world style and class. And a lot of the older male characters in this film have that, whereas the younger male characters, even if they are wearing sort of similar clothing, they come off way more gangster-like because they just don't have the same kind of ease and presence that self assurance that Bob seems to have. Well, you know what all these young guys are, they're post-war punks.
And they would be in Melville's universe, not like that. Wow, pre-war guy who starts around and looks into the mirror periodically just to make sure that he's maintaining his gangster cool. That part is so great because he, like the first time I saw this, I remember thinking, like, "Okay, here's this sort of swab distinguished older guy who for some reason is up at seven in the morning and says he's going to bed, but stops at a bar." And another gambling game first.
And so for him to look at himself and say that, "Oh, it's a real gangster's face or a real hood's face." and it's like, "Is it?" Yeah, I love that that's his first line too, but he doesn't say that he's going to bed, that it's that he just puts his hand head on his hands, like he's going to. So that the first line is that, "Holy, a fine hood-lum space when it's looking at himself and that dirty mirror." And it's like, "Oh, that's so good."
There's so many moments that I'm just so excited when I watch this movie. When they get the safe crack stuff and they hook up the big loudspeaker to it so that they can hear where the tumblers are and I'm just like, "Oh, that's so cool." Or when he has the chalk outline of the reveal casino out on this field and I'm just like, "That is so cool that he's doing this whole thing with the fore plan." I mean, there's so many great moments like that.
And I love, I mean, I think it's like an hour into the movie and Melville comes back in the soundtrack and he's just like, "This is the way Bob wanted it to go." And then we get to see the heist take place in the middle of the movie and we get to see it go off without a flaw and then we get to see how bad everything fucks up after that. This feels like the anti-reffy.
He's like, "Okay, so we're going to spend all this time getting the gang together and working on our strategy, but here, those moments where they're planning the heist, it feels like just a reason for them to hang out together." Like it doesn't have that sort of anxious sense of purpose that a lot of other heist movies have. It's like, "Okay, here's where this should go." And it's almost like they're just having fun.
Well, they've already planned it and you've already seen the planning and meticulous detail. It's like, "Why would we bother to even film the heist? We've done it." And suddenly the actual heist itself would have been a really dull afterthought. He's a hell of a beating died in the wall of contrarian and determined to be out there, you know, in a club of one. This was definitely the mischievous Jean Pierre saying, "Well, I'm going to make it with his a heist film without a heist."
And of course the future new wave guys are all like genius. Let's make an anti-crim film. Let's make an anti-gangster film. The idea of doing something contrary to their film establishment would have been like, you know, like diving into a swimming pool full of cognac. It would have been intoxicating. For you watching it this time and thinking about those kind of like weird sort of sometimes clumsy dissolves he has, you can totally see how the younger new wave directors were like, "Oh my God."
There's a moment in the film where the camera irises in and irises out and I think it's like, "Is this just the show that time has passed?" I'm not really sure what's going on here. I didn't let dissolve at the very end when those guys are putting the money in the back of the car. And we just use a quick dissolve to be like, "Wow, there must have been a lot of money being put in the back of this car in order to have to do a dissolve in the middle of it." It's so perfect.
And the fact that he's like, "No sticky finger policemen now." Like, I earned this money. In high films you get the thing where it's, okay, we're going to practice it. We're going to do all these things and then we're going to do the highest and it's going to go wrong. Or you get the, I don't want to say it was like one of the ocean's movie where it's like, "Okay, and here's how it's going to go." And they basically talk you through the plan as the the highest is happening.
And then this one, you get that little bit of, here's how the highest is supposed to go. And then I love when the the night of the highest is happening and you get the whole like, "Okay, it's 3.30am." All right, now it's 4. Now it's 4.30am. Yeah, we know that 5 o'clock is the magic hour and just that Bob has completely forgotten about everything that he is just in this reverie of winning now. And you occasionally get cuts back to the other guys who are just kind of waiting.
But they're not necessarily waiting at a signal. They don't seem to be waiting for Bob. It's not like they're going, "Oh, where is he? He was supposed to be here by now or anything." They just show up at the at the casino at 5 a.m. Sharp and by that time, Bob has cleaned out the casino completely legally. It's beautiful. They could have cooled the film way as Bob. It were like Bob goes straight or something. Because there's that midfilm sequence where it's like, "This is how we wanted it to go."
The implication, I think, especially if you've seen later Melville films first is like, "Okay, well if we saw this idealized version in the middle and we know that's what's not going to happen. Everyone's going to die." But the fact that the ending is not really tragic and- Except for Paula. Well, except for Paula, but Paula also, I think by this kind of film noir logic, by betraying Bob, Paula, kind of had to die.
At least in the scope of Melville films, the fact that he makes you kind of forget about the heist and that's not what's carrying the tension or the narrative weight. It's just like we're really excited to watch this guy gamble and win. The narrative imperative is what happens to Bob, you know, not what happens to the money. Because you're so invested in Bob winning, I guess. And that's real, the beauty of it. It's not a lot of lead to Hollywood crime films.
It's a love lead to characters like Bob and the world in which they inhabit. Bob definitely seems more connected to some of those 30s poetic realism gangsters than he does Hollywood. Like, definitely a little of junk, a band, sort of, you just want the character to succeed, even though it seems like they're in for tragedy.
I see a lot of parallels between Bob and Pepe Lemoko and just the way that Pepe is kind of stuck in the Casba and for me, Bob is there in Momart and he's that stuck there necessarily, but that's his world and that's the world that he just shows him to live at. For me, I totally agree. Paolo, he betrayed Bob and worse, he murders Mark while Mark is on the fucking phone with ledrew.
I'm surprised that that didn't come to more, but it's this whole thing of, like, I don't think Bob would use it gun if it came down to it. You know, I can see Bob holding it gun, but Bob just seems very much more like, oh, no, I'm the plan or I'm this guy, I'm not going to go out and murder anybody.
He can slap people really well. He gives Mark what for after he fights out that Mark is beat up Lydia, this woman that we never see who was, I guess, Mark's gal or maybe his piece that he had turned out because the one thing that Bob can't stand is Pemps. He just will not put up with any sort of Pemps. Absolutely, if I would prostitution, but does not like Pemps and I can totally see that. It doesn't like the idea of men sponging off of women who are actually out there doing real work.
In that same line of Bob wouldn't use a gun and his very gentlemanly qualities, there's also this great line and I'm trying to remember the context in which it came up, but they're talking about he's talking to some guys in a bar and they're talking about how things are used to be and they're basically saying that, you know, hoads and gangsters in my early days would carry guns, but they wouldn't have any bullets in them and now you have to have like now these young kids have bullets.
Is basically what they're saying. That whole prewar versus postwar and what they're doing and I mean we're going to get that a whole lot more through the rest of Melville's films, especially when you get to something like army of shadows with the two units as collide and brutally spectacular fashion.
This one is so light and fluffy compared to army of shadows compared to a lot of his later films, but this one, yeah, basically ends with a joke and it ends with the possibility that Bob is going to get away clean because Lady Luck came back and he was able to rob the casino by taking it for all that it was worth and yeah, it's a shame that although died, but that gunfight, we have to talk about the gunfight where we don't ever see the guns actually shoot.
We just kind of hear gun sound effects and they don't even like shake their guns like they're actually firing or anything. It was just like I always forgot how new wave this gunfight is that we're just going to do it where people just hold the guns, you hear the sound effects and then pour polo just kills over no blood or anything and yeah, he's out of the picture and then Bob has to comfort him.
I think he's got the little trickle of blood that comes out the side of his mouth where you're just like, oh, this guy's done for. The gunfight is as much of an afterthought as the highest would have been if I had a bullet to throw a bit. It's almost comedic.
At the first time, I watched this, I just kind of assumed like this must be the work of a younger director who didn't really know what he was doing and then when I finally saw all of his films kind of understood the context of this one, it's like no, he knew exactly what he was doing and he's just trying to tell you like this thing that you typically would care about in this kind of genre film, this trope. It's like it doesn't matter, it's just an empty symbol.
Well, you always describe it as a comedy and before watching Bob LaFlanbo, I saw a point. I can't imagine what a Marvel comedy would look like but here it is, you know, it has a semi tragic ending but a like one and it has almost comic cops shooting toy get done with that and he shots coming out of them. That obviously to Melville was extremely funny and I'm sure God would have had a right chuckle of it too. I was sure and then co-opted a bunch of it for his first film.
I don't know if either of you have seen two men in Manhattan but, totally, it almost reminds me of that more than any of his other films because like even the early melodramas, even if they're about the sort of romances, they all feel really kind of grim and tragic from the beginning and so not even they have the lightness that you see here, it's so strange.
Two men in Manhattan was deliberately playful like Bob LaFlanbo, it's almost like a mirror film where you've got the Frenchman in New York as opposed to the Hollywood style gangster in Paris. So I've never watched them back to back but I feel like that would make a really interesting double feature. Yeah, it was very nice, shouldn't have been to do in her book, jump here in Melville in American Paris.
She groups those two in another film together and I'm trying to remember which one it is if it's magnet of doom or it's definitely not the second breath and it's not like do though. I think it's magnet of doom because they have this like road trip. That's the one where he goes to the U.S. Yeah, that's where Belmont goes to the U.S. Yeah, Belmonto in a in a convertible driving through Texas.
It's wonderful. It's like Paris, Texas with laughs and I'm so glad now that that one's a lobby's here to find because that one for me for the longest time was the toughest Melville you could not find that decent print of it anyway for any money in the world. All considered he didn't make that many films and to have things like Lidulo, Sonlas Samurai and Lestruckler Rouge be so acclaimed but like half of his films you could barely find for a while. It's so weird because they're all great.
And I think there's even more books about him that are just French only that they're not translated at all. It's like come on guys, we deserve it. We like Melville over here as well, you should maybe think about it. So speaking of let's go ahead, we're going to take a break. We'll return with an interview with Chinat Vincent, the author of Jean-Pierre Melville and American Paris right after these brief messages. So how does it feel when you play roll up to win with Tim Ordin's?
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No purchase necessary, a camera registration required 50 US and DC 18 plus enter by 42223. See rules at rollup to win.com for free entry full details. Fought in Florida where prohibited. Hi, I'm Dave Kittrich, Phil Maker and Los Angeles, and I'm the host of the Outcast, presented by Outfest. A new podcast where I have conversations with LGBT creators and allies to discuss their work, their inspirations, their passions, and the challenges of getting our authentic voices heard.
I was scared, except I thought, "Oh, what am I doing? Like, here I am selling my soul." But when I realize what the movie was, it's like, "I mean, let's do, let's make this wonderful movie, the freedom of ad libbing and letting things happen in the moment with Steven Trask, let's write something that involves stand-up comedy, drag, punk rock." And it was so rebellious and percosious, I guess, the definition of gay to me is freedom. Women gave to show its life, I feel like.
Well, it's also a bit of a hunkfest. You guys are hot as hell. You are too kind. It's like, "Five 10 years ago." It's a no-holds bar talk with iconic creators and performers. It's not "F*** white people, it's not." I hate white people. It's dear white people. It's how you start a letter. The whole climax of the show is a sex scene between Nalkeur and Vendla. And I remember feeling personally self-conscious about never having been with a woman in any relationship before.
I'm always thinking about the audience. Make the bill, make the black, make the crime. That's as simple as it is for me. I had been not wanting to be a part of the film, but was clear in the edit that I had to really reshape it. The film really told me what it needed to be. Cinema is an empathy machine and it sort of allows you to see yourself in people's faces that you normally wouldn't see humanity in. I'm getting most going to start talking about it. And the tea is definitely spilled.
Say that doubted anything at this doubt. No, no, no. I don't need to hear all the charming stories. I want to hear the ugly, gory relationship that's human on the ham. We're cutting that part out by the way. And we guess like John Cameron Mitchell, Christine Vaishan, LeBurn Cox, Jonathan Grough, Justin Simian, Jim Fal, Miss Coco Peru, Rachel Mason, Jeffrey Schwartz, HP Mendoza, and Fabulous Queens, Changelog Yurika, and Bob the Drag Queen. I'm sweating the house now.
Can never know what's going to come up. You know me, I'm so big and strong that Yurika and Bob actually high behind me. And I protect you. Why don't you all wash Bob? She does. Oh, wait, she we haven't had security. I think they think I'm the security bitch. It's season one of the outcast presented by Outfest premiering in the summer of 2020. Hope you can join us. Before we even start to talk about Melbourne, I'm so curious about you.
Can you tell me how you got into academia and writing about foam? I'm French obviously and I studied English in Paris at the University of the Soba and I English Language and Literature. And then I moved to England theoretically for one year as part of my degree. And then met my husband and saw that I stayed. And then I happened to be in a town called Norwich. This was in the mid late 70s. And when film studies was really beginning to be developed at the time.
And where I was happened to be a place where there were a couple of the pioneers of studying film. And I always was a fan of cinephile. I was always loved the cinema. I started the women's film festival there. What I was in that town and also started PhD in film. Which I did on French cinema in the 1930s with and this is where I got interested in a genre by the people of Morocco which you tell me you like. And this is how it started. What was the first mobile film that you ever saw? Lusamurai.
I saw it when it was re-shoed in the UK in 1996. I had to say earlier on when I was younger and in France and these films were coming out. I didn't really register with me. So it was later. And when Lusamurai was re-shoed in 1996 in the UK. And I saw it that I was really in pro-noverbite. I thought this is such a fantastically beautiful film. So I then became interested in Melville and started looking for these other films. And it's a let me ask to that. I was commissioned to write a book.
Somebody said would you like to write a book about Melville for a particular collection. For Manchester University press. And in fact, I didn't do it for them because their books were very short. And I said he deserves more. And so I then contacted the British Women's Institute and they said yes would like you to. So this is how the book came about. So it was really that moment of Lusamurai coming out which for me marked my own interest in Melville.
And I think a lot of people as well because this is when he's reputation. At that moment I think marked the time when he's reputation suddenly had a sort of second life. What kind of challenges were there writing a whole book about Melville and all of his films? In one sense it was easy because Melville is somebody who made relatively few films since he made 13 feature films. Which is relatively a very containable number. As it happened because this was the late 90s.
They all became available on the HS and DVD. So I didn't have any problem accessing the material in terms of the films. The challenges were more to do with the lack of our cargo material. The lack of material on his life, the fact that he's relatively mysterious person. But because I wasn't going to write the biography anyway, I was writing a book about his films, primarily. And I had the films. So this made it much easier for me because I could really cause it the whole career.
One thing I love about your book is just the way that you position him in the entire landscape of French film. And how his gangster films differed from the gangster films that were coming out before it or around it. I really love that. Well thank you. I mentioned writing my thesis about French cinema in 1930s. And I dropped a lot of genre bar and got interested in the poetic realism of course of the 1930s. Many of which are crime films.
And then a film like "Pin Marco" is a kind of ancestor of the French gangster film. And I like that so much that I wanted to see how this carried on after the war. And of course, Gabba and Stals was instrumental in the revival of the gangster film after the war with Toshippa, or Gillesby in 1954. And I was very interested in this particular genre of French crime films where crime movies and as well as the whole landscape of French cinema.
But in that post-war period when Melville emerges is a particularly interesting period. But in the French cinema because you have in parallel the popular genre films like "The gangster film" for instance. But you also have the beginning of the new wave in the late '50s of a kind of different kind of film. So I think Melville and certainly Bob Lefbombos of film that can be used fully seen as in between those traditions or belonging to Bob Lefbino. I was at an interest in popular French cinema.
In the films that people actually like to see as opposed to simply the great films that critic recognized. Of course, when you look at the 1930s, like for my thesis, they are sometimes where they're the same. So films like or Pepino Rocco, they're great films like "Great filmmakers" but they're also extremely popular with the public. I'm always interested in how the films fare with the public, how they're embedded in the culture at the time.
Melville was perfect figure because he was both a very idiosyncratic figure, a very original unique, somebody who liked to control everything and made, I think he's filmed like all like no other. They extremely recognizable. And at the same time, especially from Latin English and one of them was, they were very popular with the audience. He was a very well known figure. So he lived in both worlds in the cinema that the critics recognize.
But also the cinema that people actually like to go and see in the cinema and films that did very well at the box office. And also because I have always worked on Gabba, I was had an interest in stars in May, Lainfim, and of course Melville's film from Leon Moran-Pret, almost the views great stars of French cinema, like Alad Alon, Jean-Paul-Meldon, Edward Soltz. So to me it was a figure combined all these different aspects of the cinema and that made him really fascinating.
Yeah, I love that idea that he's neither fish nor foul, but he is new wave tradition of quality, but that just makes him stay in the part from the crowd. That's right, yes, yes. It's a very idiosyncratic figure. And also one of the interesting aspects of which was concentrated in his name, already his name is Lux, and so on was that he was French filmmaker, but also very influenced by American cinema.
He loved American films, and although I spent quite a lot of time in my book, a refuting the idea that his films were just copies of American films, which was one of the accusations that was made of his gangster films over his just imitating American cinema. And I think he's not, he's making a very specific hybrid between the French and the American tradition, that also made him an interesting sort of transnational figure to some extent.
And that's why in my book, I had a sub that I was said in American, in Paris, this was a French man who looked, tried to look like an American with his destined stats on hat and big American cars and trench coats, a bit like figures in his film, and yet, and since that was completely a figure of Perce war French culture, and in Bartolso, because he himself was part of history, he had been in the resistance during the war,
he was somebody very much embedded in French history as well as completely fascinated with American culture and American cinema. The whole idea of him being in the resistance colors so much of his work, especially, I would say some of the gangster films, and especially the idea of the honor and the code that some of these folks live by, as opposed to the younger generation, as opposed to some of the people that might have betrayed that code that were around during the war.
Melvin, like both gangster films, but when you look at his war films, especially Arme in the Shadow, that he's 69, and you look at his gangster films, they're very similar, and people sometimes say he makes his war films like gangster films and he's gangster films are a bit like war films, and watching Bob LaFlamour again, the other night, I was reminded of how many references they are in the film to the period of the German occupation of France,
and the look of the film really, although it's made in 1956, it could have been ten years before, it could have been during the 1940s during the German occupation, and this constantly references in the dialogue to things are not the same anymore, everything is rotten now, people don't respect the codes which were the pre-war codes, and of course it's veiled reference to the German occupation,
and the burden you placed on the French population, of course, and all the difficulties, but also as well known ambiguity between the Gestapo, the collaborations forces and the criminal underworld, and this well known Gestapo user brought it from the underworld, and so there's a kind of blood bordered between the two, and I think that the gangster film is very oblique, sometimes it's sometimes more direct references to that.
One of the things which I did not develop in my book, but subsequently, I've been looking at is the figure of Roger Duché, and the actor who plays Bob LaFlamour himself, someone who was implicated in a fairly ambiguous way in activities of the Gestapo, he had links with the Gestapo, he had trouble with the law, and he also went to jail as somebody,
so he's somebody who I think Melvin used very deliberately as a kind of embodiment of that very blood boundary between the law and the criminal underworld, that was much more in evidence during the war. And also if you look at Bob LaFlamour, the look of the film, the cast that I used, the famous Cetaxia, I've all the big black cast, which in the film that I used both by the police and by the gangsters, and they very typical of that period, if in that you could be during your occupation.
It's both historically accurate to some extent, but also something which Melvin uses for stylistic purposes as well. You think there's any truth to Melville talking about how he had to go to the underworld to ask permission to use Duché for Bob LaFlamour? Yeah, I don't know, I'm not sure whether that's true or not.
It sounds like one of those very nice anecdotes, but there are different accounts of Duché and actual implication with the Gestapo, whether he only borrowed money from them or whether he was more implicated than that. It's all fairly mysterious, but certainly it suits Melvin's purpose to have someone who not only looks the part, but actually embody it in his person, the ambiguities of that period.
I really appreciate that Duché is older and distinguished and that he has this kind of mock family between Anna and Paolo, and I just appreciate that family dynamic that they have going on here. The basic is one of the significant aspects of the French gangster film of that period, of the 1950s in particular, which is the way in which the gangs are organised like a family with the main character as the patriarch.
I think distinguishes the French films, as I said from the American world, and Gaban's character in Rizby and Duché's character in Bob, this is somebody who's tired, who's at the end of his life, who only aspires to lead a sort of comfortable, almost a brochure life going to the bars in his area, and then of course there is that trope of doing the last job, which we know will be fatal to some extent, of course, because it's part of the genre,
but it's such a recarimentative in the French gangster film that I think it really marks them out from the concerns, which are much more based on action and tend to have younger, married characters.
But this patriarchal figure, this old man, who wants to do the last job before, in a way, wants to retire and have a quiet life, and as in Bob La Flombe, lives in a very nice apartment, King the Inormat, is also part of actually a much wider type of narrative in French cinema, others will go back to the beginning with the patriarchal figure at the centre, and usually with a sort of symbolic family with the young son, so in Bob La Flombe we have put over the young man,
and a kind of semi-incessuous relationship with the young woman. It was very conspicuous, that the young characters can only be in the story if they are there, except to be within the orbit of the patriarch. They're not going to challenge his place.
They're just like the son and daughters, and of course what is out of the picture is the older woman, who tends to be very marginalized, and although it's true that most gangster film, marginalized women, it's typically a major, not just in French cinema, but I think it in French in the main, in particular, it's that sort of a kind of almost like a benevolent figure, and we see him providing for these young people,
slupping them when they're not, don't behave as they should, but this is the 9 behaviour.
This is the way I portray, and I think it's very specific to the cinema, because if you read the books on which those films are based, such as the work of Guslaboru-Ton, which scripted by all the book on which Chris Bays, they are much nastier, they're much more violent, they're much more misogynist, and so it's a much more bitter and violent world, than where the films sort of portray this kind of rather nice and benign, the real families are never there.
These people don't have bones to go to their wife or their children, the sorrow gauge homers in the cafe, where they meet their characters, so to me, this is one of the channels of the gangstrapians of that period, and Bob Ruflabor is very typical of that. How did Melville and the women in his films?
Generally speaking, Melville is because he chose to work with George, that's a tradition in the masculine, like the gangster film, the majority of his films are portray a world which is mostly male, in which women are marginal, they're either even, the woman who runs the barring bubble in the flumber, against very benevolent and figure, they're not treated as unpleasant or aggressive, but they're really marginalised, or as in their work, they're sort of rules to be an early buy,
and one says the certainty that the heterosexual sexuality of the characters, but they play really very small role, and some of the films like a practically eliminated women. And then there are two exceptions in his work, one is the film you made in the 1993, really. His first film, "Mare, the Resistance" gives the woman quite a prominent role.
Now it's the adaptation of the book, so it's actually following what that book does, and then he made a melodrama called "Setlet" when you read that letter within the 50s again, and we were a character playing by Juliette Greco, the singer as Juliette Greco, as part of it, it's a melodrama, so a lot of story, so she has quite an important role, and then there is one of my favorite films by me, which is Leon, the story of the relationship between a Catholic priest,
played by Jean-Premont-Dre, and a woman who falls in love with him, and their discussions about religion and so on. But this is a book that is an adaptation of another written by a woman, it's an autobiographical woman, or a novel by a woman who is returning her story, said during the war. But these are very much the early exception, and then everything else, all the great gangster films, Leon-Dre, even a flick, which has Catherine de Nœve, as a big female star, but it's really a marginal place.
So, Melvis, his main movies are really films about men and about masculinity, and he chose the genres that enable him to do that. So I think the very interesting studies of masculinity, but I'd say if one looks for important female roles in his films, then they're all there. So I think it's a function of the genre, and it's a function of his interest in those masculine figures.
And when one looks at his image with the trench coat and the stets on the head, you know, when he has this sort of masculine figure, which at the same time, as the time of someone who was very cultured, was married or his life, personally, I don't see Melvis as misogynist, but I think it's someone who was interested in a predominantly male culture.
Having only been to Paris one time, can you tell me a little bit more as far as the landscape, and especially the whole idea of Momar and Pigal, and how those were in the 1950s versus today? With the beginning of Bob Leflon, there's a very funny moment when we begin in Momar. I think first, it's important to say that a lot of Bob Leflon is shot on location in the streets of Momar and Pigal, and part of the pleasure of watching the film is also to see those areas as they were.
Of course, Momar and Pigal are very touristy places, now they tend to be always very crowded. One of the pleasures in Bob Leflon, especially at the beginning, is that where we are dawn and we see those empty streets of Paris, it's something which today would be almost impossible to see, even that time of the day. The film begins on top of the Momar pill near the church, and we see the panoramic shots that shows us the city below and at daybreak.
This is a very poetic image. And Melville makes a little joke about saying that it's like heaven, and then we see the camera goes down with the cable car that tourist date to go up and down and says, "Pigal is hell." He's making a little joke about the fact that Momar feels hands-for-charge, particularly associated with the Sacrique church. And also at the time, and to some extent today, although today, of course, it's a vintage place.
Still like a village, even today, if you go to Momar, you go away from Plasdutär, where all those painters are with a million tourists, like a few little streets, and you really could be in a 19th century village. Quite extraordinary, of course, it's been preserved in Aspe, into some extent, but it really looks like a village, and you're in the film, some little houses and so on. And then Pigal was the centre of Sleazy Nightlife and prostitution.
So, the building scene in Mavla from Bavla, we see very clearly all those nightclubs, which advertise the most daring, strippedies and naked women, even then in the 1950s, it was a place where they're slightly naive tourists from the provinces, or abroad, would come and be fleeceing one of those nightclubs with female hostesses.
And that division is still there, although strippedies and nightclubs, as well as don't have the sense of daring image as they did at the time. But nevertheless, there's still something slightly sleazy about Pigal, it's part of its image, and something more both elevated geographically, but also the sense of Momar as this kind of toy, quite corner of Paris, where you could always be, it's like being a village.
It's making a little joke of it, but actually it's still like that today, as I say, I think it's like that today in a way that is, yeah, it's preserving aspect, it's very touristy, and many people who know a little bit about Francinema, for example, would remember if you were like Amelie, which was made in the early years of the 21st century, and which is also setting Momar, and very different visually much like stream and in color, but nevertheless preserves also that image of the little streets, the quiet streets, the cafe,
the sort of slightly provincial air, but what is fascinating in Bob Lefromos to actually see the real streets and the real cafe in which the characters go. We talk a little bit about the relationship between Bob and Roger and what your feelings are on that. Bob is presented as a patriarchal figure, a quiet old man who leads a fairly bourgeois quiet life, even though he's against her and he's about to rub the casino into the wheel. He's co-siers, brings his clean clothes and cleans the flood.
It has this kind of very regular quiet life. He's the head of his little family, the patriarch, there's symbolic son, Polo, the symbolic daughter, and the young woman, he more like, "Spick up on the streets of Pellal." But he's not interested in her sexually, and this is quite clear. In fact, he pushes her in Polo's arms. And the really important character in his life, in the sense of the person who's always back his side, is his friend.
So the most important person in his life is Roger, who's an accolade, another minor, against a figure who runs one of the night clubs that he frequents. Bob La Flombe, or the Flombe, is a slang term for gambling, and we see that Bob is passionate gambler, which is leads him to his both his doom. But also to the great fortune in the casino at the end of the film.
And so what is interesting is that there's always that quiet presence by his side, who is Roger, and even though there is absolutely no indication of homosexuality between them,
I find it's very striking that Roger plays the role of the wife. He's always the voice of reason. He's saying, "Now you shouldn't. You should stop gambling now. Come on. You should go to bed. It's late. And you shouldn't do that. And are you sure?" And all the time, they're together, and they are quite a number of seats, where they're together sitting in the car.
And looking at each other, and one knows that they know each other incredibly well is very much an old couple. And very often people have speculated on Melvin as a closet homosexual, as representing homosexuality in his film. And I think that is in a way in exaggeration, because in the sense that there's nothing in the films that enables you to say that. But in the same way, the films are all very much about a male world, where the significant relationships are between the male characters.
And again, with no implication of sexuality, certainly not explicitly, the real couple in Bob Luslombard is Bob and Roger, and he doesn't seem to have another life in a way. I think that's, and it's a very affectionate relationship. It's like a no couple.
I was like his relationship to with Lidrue, the inspector, and that relationship that we see later on, and they do know between our main character and a police officer as well. I always like that back and forth that he has with those two types of characters. Yes, they're relationship with Lidrue is also very interesting and you're quite right. And I see it as both, this is part of this male world, where men who observe the same codes, understand each other and respect each other.
So Lidrue respects Bob and Bob respects Lidrue. I think it's also an only comment on the occupation, the German occupation period, of a period when a time when there was this blood lines between the police and the criminal on the world. And it's at that point in the center of the beginning, in particular, when there's a discussion of Bob by Lidrue with one of his inspectors and who says the criminal isn't against her. And Lidrue said yes, he's a principal guy and he saved my life.
And it's this network of honourable male figures who might be enemies, but or not, because they respect the same codes of behavior. What are you working on lately? I'm finishing a book about a French filmmaker called Claude Orton Larra, who was one of the great figures of the tradition of quality and worked, I had much longer career than Melville, he started in the 20s and went on to the early 70s.
But he's great period was during the war and in the 50s, and he made great classics like everyone in the flesh and La Traverse et Paris, she's a great film about the German occupation. And I was, you ask him to talk about Melville reminded me that there's an interesting similarity because both in a web kind of difficult figure, but difficult in their practice, very demanding directors, very enthralling figures, a great filmmaker.
But also filmmakers who's life really was their work, that obviously they had the private life, but it's very marginal and everything they did was geared to their filmmaking. They were terribly different, but nevertheless I suddenly see that there is a similarity between the two. You said that the Melville book you actually hired to write about Melville, but otherwise how do you pick your subjects?
It's an interesting question. In a way, very often, one thing leads to another. And as I say, I'm within general field of French cinema, particularly in popular French cinema. I'm written on filmmakers of actors like Gabba, filmmakers Melville, and I was written quite a lot about the bardo. And the Gabba is sort of because in my thesis, which I did actually publish as a book, all the bits when published in different web, the chapter on Gabba became the book on Gabba.
And then it became part of this book called Stars and Stars of French cinema where I have a range of stars and again, as a normal book, and I've been asked to update it and I should do it. And add some new more recent stars like Omar C for example. The bardo came out, yes, the bad interest in stars and following Gabba's career, then there were films like "On Cadmello", which is a film by Croidot Olaha, which has bardo and Gabba together.
They're the only film where they are together. My two favorite stars and stars together in the same film. But yes, it's partly in the case of Melville. It was seeing the samurai. I'm guided by the material in the way. It's what interests me. There's so much, there's quite a lot still to be done about this kind of cinema. There is a feel as a coherence in a sense that a lot of it has to do with those populous filmmakers and stars off.
Let's say from the 1930s to the 1960s, so far it's been really within that area. Professor Vincent, thank you so much for your time. This is great talking with you. Thank you for asking me and for thanks to you watching, oh good. When you visit Arizona, time is measured in moments, not minutes. Like the moment your work stress disappears as you kayak through the canyons.
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And please like and follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at 80s TV ladies. You can find interviews and exclusive behind-the-scenes content on all of your favorite 80s TV ladies. 80s TV ladies is the place to go. Please join us. 80s TV ladies. I've heard about a mouth change my ways. I lost this game, this is above the money game. I've heard about a lot of people who are in the same business. I've heard about a lot of people who are in the same business.
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The only guy who could click and play on the system is the guy who can struggle against me. It means... If I see a mirror at the top of the guy, that's quite a surprise. I don't want anyone to surprise us. I don't want anyone to surprise us. I don't want anyone to surprise us. I don't want anyone to surprise us. He doesn't want money. He wants money, can I? He's not worth a freight charge. What I do to both your faces will definitely be Cubist. Rows you yours where she ends, no one else.
Always breathe again to me. And the consequences are telling me. I know I'm gonna change that you. We're back and we're talking about Bob LaFlame Bear. I'm sorry to say folks, but we're going to have to talk about the remake that came out in 2003 by Neil Jordan. I was seeing before we started recording that I remembered this one being a lot worse than it is. I rewatched this morning. I had seen it in 2002, sorry, when it came out at the Toronto Film Festival.
I don't remember if I knew it was a remake of Bob when I walked in. But I definitely realized it very quickly thereafter because we've got... We've got character names that are the same though. Roger is now the cop. Roger is now the cop and rather than Bob's good buddy that he has. It's interesting. It's like a distorted echo of the original one. Did you guys have a chance to see the good thief? So I haven't seen it in a few years. I think it's something that I rented out of sheer boredom.
Neil Jordan, I grew up watching a lot of his films like Company of Wolves and interview with the vampire. And I think he's often a... he often makes flawed films, but they're always interesting. But this one, I couldn't bring myself to rewatch it. And I, you know, am a very outspoken hater of remakes. So that's I'm sure part of it. But I just don't understand why he would remake this movie and give him that kind of like that heroin motivation that he has. How depressingly post-war.
There's really nothing... Maybe someone disagrees with me. But I don't think there's very much about heroin that's whimsical. I mean, maybe you could write a film like that. Maybe if you're a jacks into your funny bone. The level of acting is good. And Nick Nolty is Bob now. And I like... and I fuck up his name every time. Kiki Kyro playing Roger playing the LaDru role. Sayed Tag Magui Ekikus' gentleman's name. I always like when he shows up in things and he's pal though.
Yeah, it's got a really good solid cast to it. But we start to go into this whole thing. Now there's that just one house. There's two high-sletter going on. So we have Bob, as supposed to be doing the heist of the casino. And with this one, he's very aware that the secret is out. But he's like now using that against the police and against the... The Pimp now, who's not Raulul in this one. I reme, I think, is Pimp in this one. And so we've got that, plus there's an art heist.
And there's this whole thing about how Bob's got this Picasso painting. And he tells us story about it every single time he's got it. And then we find out later on in the movie that is actually a fake. But maybe that's playing in with this art heist. But then we find out from the Lidru character that all the artwork in the museum that they're about to rob is fake anyway. It goes way too many places. And it's got this kind of slick sheen of the early 2000s. Very desaturated.
The color a lot of times. We do this kind of weird slow motion effect a few times. And yeah, just nicknlty. I mean, that he's unherwined at the beginning. And then he kicks the heroin halfway through. He has to do this whole like, train-spawning thing. And surprise there wasn't a baby going across the ceiling. I was just like, okay, you know, me, like kicks her with him. And then like two seeds. I'm like, oh, okay. And then the am character, I'm like, she's very, very centralized to this film.
And I'm just like, I don't care about her that much. I care more about Nick Nolty. And I care more about the Roger/Lidru character. Well, thank God, I never bothered to watch it. I need give me enough reasons not to. And there there it is. And I share the same, you know, to stay in for really makes in general. I think Neil Jordan made one good gangster film and that was Mona Lisa. So I think with the memory of Bob Hoskins being a him-per-sharfer, good. Mona Lisa is absolutely incredible.
And from what I remember if the good thief, the problem is that it's one of those movies that just constantly reminds you of better movies you could be watching. Mona Lisa is one of them. An American friend with whole art-hiced thing is another one. And of course, the original. It's just, it almost feels like the sort of thing where if the plot had been different and it hadn't been so obviously a bubble flumber remake maybe could be better.
But I really feel like it fits into that like late 90s early to mid 2000s wave of heist movies that, yeah, that were just like trying to feel really cool. But it's like, you missed the mark. Stop saturating the color and making it look like a movie. Saturating the color and making everything look like that. I have about as much interest in watching Neil Jordan remake Bob LaFlombo as I would Quentin Tarantino remakingless samurai with Samuel L. Jackson.
I mean, I love video idea of Hollywood cannibalizing the French gangster film. There is a delicious irony about it. The conversation between American crime and French crime cinema had been going along time before the war and continued on until the glory days of Melville's final films in the 70s. There's still that dialogue between those two separate but similar cultures. But then I think the conversations got on too long.
And I think the good tip represents the nightmare of that conversation as far as I'm concerned, not having watched it and never needing to. That's a really good point. And also that you could even argue that that conversation goes all the way back to Edgar Allan Poe, writing his first detective stories, which refer back to French literature and it just did sort of like, but it is in the room all. Totally inspired by French fiction.
And so it's like it starts in the 1800s with fiction and maybe it's done now. You mentioned to Tina and the thing that people were tripping over themselves about was in Resward Dogs, they don't show the robbery. Isn't that just amazing? They don't show the robbery. And it's like, yeah, we've been talking about this ice film where there's no heiston out for the last hour and a half here. Yeah, this has happened before folks. It's really okay. And we are in the good thief.
We are in a post-terrintino world where we've had Resvard Dog. We've had Jackie Brown. We've had pulp fiction. And so the coolness factor in plus all of the Tarrantino clones that went on afterwards. So by the time we get to this picture, it's just like, "Okay, yeah, I've seen all this stuff before." Like you said, Brad, we're watching so many of these other movies.
There's a tall and of great French gangster films out there that are much rather be seeing than watching this remake of Bob La Flambeur. And the problem with remake items is that those films to a generation not schooled in the older stuff become the standards. They replace the films that they'd cannibalized in the first place. And so that's the danger of not doing your homework. Well, not having an inquisitive and adventures back with looking glance into film history.
You think that these flashy remakes it. And that's quite dangerous. It's also sad to think that somebody would maybe watch the good thief and think, "Okay, this is fun." And then never even know the bubbles flumber exist. Yeah, and you get to the good thief and you hear even Leonard Cohen and the soundtrack and you're just like, "Oh, Leonard Cohen on the soundtrack, just like, "Natureborn killers." And it's like, "Yeah, trust me, Leonard Cohen is done stuff before natural work, "illars."
He was around for a few years. To hear that new singer, Leonard Cohen, yeah. He even did a cover of that concrete blonde song. And even the end of the movie, the end of the good thief, is Bano doing a cover of that life, which was obviously made famous by Frank Sinatra, and you're just like, "Oh, why'd we rather be watching Ocean to Lebanon?" Okay.
I would much rather be living in a universe where instead of you two getting famous, Gamma Friday's band, The Virgin Prunes became world-renowned, like you two are a blight on humanity. I haven't even told you at one point Andrew, there's a twin gag, the Polish twins show up. And I don't know if that really ever plays out in the movie, like allegedly there's this whole other plot that's going on.
And I don't know if I just didn't just being a tensioner, just didn't care because I'm just like, "Okay, now there's twins "volved in somehow they're going to help Rob the casino while Bob is actually winning." Yeah. Who gives a shit? Edna das also a quite annoying problem of those 2000s crime movies is they include a lot of these flashy elements like the sort of twins gag that it's not crucial to the story and we never return to it.
It's just like, "Oh, here's this cool thing to keep your attention for two minutes." So annoying, such bad storytelling. It's like in the 2000s, you know, you'd had 10 years of the sons of parenting. And everyone was kind of getting a little used to that level. And so you had to jack the level of excitement up in the films. And everything became like watching video games on, you know, meth, just big band hyper hyper. You know what I mean? Like beyond hyper.
Yeah, and I can't even imagine what going to the movies going to the cinema to watch those pieces of shit would be like because, you know, unless you're on Riddlein, not of it, would even be stomachable. Yeah, I'm trying to remember when smoke and aces came out because I think that was kind of the ultimate of that word, yeah, to your point. And I'm on something that was a hyper hyper. That's the one I was thinking of. That's exactly it. There's also that that one, what is it called?
Lucky number 11. Oh God, I saw that meth theater. Jesus Christ. Oh, alright guys, let's go ahead and take another break and play preview for next week's show. [Music] This is the famous movie. [Music] Hello, it's me! [Music] I'll be right. I'll be right. I'll be right. If you can, I'll be right. [Music] I'll be right. It's not. Or you don't know the name of the movie. Oh, I'm in the movie! It's the movie! It's the movie! [Music] [Music]
As right, we'll be back next week with an episode on Marseille Carnes, the children of Paradise until then I want to thank my co-host Sam and Andrew. So Andrew, what's been keeping you busy lately, sir? During my new punk rock music documentary, Pub the movie, that kicks off its Australian theatrical season about three days.
So that's going to be a whirlwind, you know, five to six weeks, running around Australia, showing the story of this crazed Melbourne punk rocker and cartoonist who captured his life in cartoon form for about 35 years, in a weekly Pub strip, weekly cartoon strip called Pub. So it's a fascinating story about a man, his pencil, and the crazed punk rock music universe that swelter around him for 40 years. And then I've just started on my new documentary series called Film Safari.
I started shooting an episode in King's Cross, you know, the red light district of Sydney, where these two amazing women who are now in their 70s and 80s used to make one films in King's Cross in the early 70s. That's the great untold story of Australian cinema right there in the midst of the Pigal Obstitney, King's Cross.
And then of course one of the episodes is Film Safari, El Maria, where Sam and I run around spaghetti Western towns going, "Oh, thank God, this is where they show full of the general." We're all just be squeezing my life-sized John Maria Pillow, which I'm reavel one tape pillow crying. You can see the Alice coxes Lapelle, because Alex said he's being... Yes. Yeah. Thank you, Mike. For the hook up. Oh, yeah. You got it. I'm glad I played part of this, so that's all I could ask.
Well, when you do your episode on Detroit and we start talking about Clarence and Alabama, you can shoot me right in the head. If you haven't already been shot by a stray bull, because Detroit, oh my God. And Sam, what's the latest with you, please? Well, I should mention my podcast, which is "The Deathner of As of Now" and I'm sure you'll see it. Well, our most recent episode was "A Valentine's Day" one on Necrofelia movies.
And then I've had so many things come out recently in terms of commentaries, but things sort of related to Bob LaFlumber. I did a commentary for the keynote release of this "All in Very Strange" Alan Ladd, movie called "Lucky Jordan" about this gangster trying to dodge the draft to line up uncovering a Nazi plot, because you can't have a Hollywood movie from the 40s without someone being a good American.
And I also contributed a commentary to this noir adjacent movie called "Rope of Sand", which has a very sweaty Bert Lancaster in existential angst in the desert. Thank you so much folks for being on the show. Thanks to everybody for listening. If you want to hear more of me shooting off my mouse, check out some of the other shows I work on. They are all available at WeedingLameEDia.com.
Thanks especially to our Patreon community, if you want to join the community, visit patreon.com/projectshabuth. Every donation we get helps the projection booth take over the world. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]