Julien Duvivier (1937)

A great romantic thriller – from the headlong, graphic description of the Algiers casbah which sets the scene, to the ship’s horn that drowns out Pépé’s despairing cry to Gaby, the Parisian woman he’s fallen in love with, as her ship sets sail for France.  Crime mustn’t pay so Pépé le Moko (Jean Gabin), a gangster in hiding and in exile in the casbah, isn’t allowed to reclaim Gaby or Paris, his spiritual home (although one assumes he’s actually from Toulon – that’s what the slang ‘Moko’ implies).  Yet this is a film in which you root so strongly for the criminal hero that to leave him handcuffed on the harbour at the end would be deeply disappointing.  There is therefore a sense that he’s escaped when Pépé manages to pull a knife from his jacket and end his life with it.  This they’ll-never-catch-me-alive final twist is as comforting as it’s saddening.  The suicide is tragic and a relief.

Julien Duvivier, with his cinematographers Marc Fossard and Jules Kruger, made a motion picture that’s remarkable for its time – the expressive speed of the camera movement in Pépé’s climactic rush for freedom is especially extraordinary.  What Pépé sees as his steps quicken down towards the city, the harbour and the sea is contrasted wonderfully with what Gaby sees – not Pépé but a sunny blur of high buildings beyond the harbour – as she looks out from the departing ship.  Duvivier did the adaptation of Henri La Barthe’s novel with Henri Jeanson and Jacques Constant; La Barthe himself also gets a screenplay credit (as ‘Detective Ashelbe’).  The writing is sharp and witty from the start but you find yourself smiling less as the impossible circumstances of Pépé, his furiously possessive partner Inès and the other criminals holed up in the casbah sink in and take hold.  The growing complexity of the situation and of the narrative tone is most impressive.

As Gaby, Mireille Balin has a metallic quality which makes Jean Gabin’s sensual intimacy all the more amazing.  Balin is beautiful but she seems like the image of a woman rather than a flesh and blood one – because she almost isn’t there on screen, the effect of Pépé’s kissing Gaby or telling her how great she smells is to enhance the sense that he’s actually making love to the city of Paris rather than its human epitome.  If this makes Pépé le Moko sound high flown and ridiculous, I’m misrepresenting it.  And Pépé is very human – he treats Inès (Line Noro) appallingly.  The successive scenes in which he seems to have come back to Inès, then sees Gaby arriving at the casbah and changes his mind, are a startling combination.  Pépé seems to recognise that Inès has saved his life then decides that she didn’t need to.  She betrays him finally and she knows that he knows.  Pépé le Moko ends in death or unhappiness for nearly all concerned.  The sequence which features the death of two characters, Pierrot (Gilbert-Gil) and Régis (Fernand Charpin), is brilliantly imaginative in what Duvivier doesn’t show and in his use of music.  Jean Gabin speaks quietly on the whole:  Pépé le Moko doesn’t need to raise his voice to assert his authority – it’s when he’s moved to shout that you realise he’s vulnerable.  Louis Gridoux is excellent as the shrewd police inspector Slimane – that name is almost onomatopoeic.  The smaller roles are strongly played – Gaston Modot is, as usual, especially good – and the atmosphere of the casbah is extraordinarily vivid.

22 May 2012