Some Well-Known Films with Roulette Scenes

Most likely the most famous of all films containing a roulette wheel as part of its plot is the Oscar-winning "Casablanca". Its fame, of course, derives from the actors, Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, but roulette features very decidedly as part of the story. In this film, the roulette wheel is "fixed" so that the hero can help the heroine escape from the Nazis with her husband. It is a classic, romantic film and without the roulette wheel the plot wouldn't have worked.

However, there are other films that have displayed the game of roulette with emphasis on its decadence:

In the filmed version of George Elliot's great Victorian novel "Daniel Deronda", the heroine, Gendolyn Harleth, tries to recoup some of her family's fortune by gambling at the roulette table. When she loses all her money, she attracts the attention of the hero, Daniel, who pities her for the loss.

In the recent film, "Vanity Fair", based on W.M. Thackeray's novel of the same name, his anti-heroine, Becky, finds her downfall at the roulette table.

Then in the 1993 film, "Indecent Proposal", gambling and avarice was the basis of the whole plot in which a young couple loses everything they own at the game of roulette.

In the 1998 German movie "Run, Lola, Run", Lola tries to save her boyfriend's fate by gambling at roulette to create a happy ending.

And then, of course, there is the famous, or infamous, game of Russian roulette in the Oscar-winning film, "The Deer Slayer".

The game of roulette has shown up in many films over the years. Even the Marx Brothers included it in some of their films. In most of the films, the game is not featured in a very attractive way. It generally is displayed to show the audience that it doesn't pay to gamble, but every once in a while it brings a happy ending.