Wow! Such a good movie.

Good movie but grossly overrated

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

You can tell when a movie is trying to impose an attitude on you, but it just doesn't take. We are obviously supposed to regard Pépé as a charming rogue, but I thought he was rude and inconsiderate. We are supposed to feel sorry for Inès, who truly loves him, but it is hard to care about a woman who will allow a man to treat her like dirt.We are supposed to believe that Pépé and Gaby truly love each other, but I could not begin to swallow that one. Though Pépé appears to be about thirty years old, and supposedly has had his way with countless women, yet we are asked to believe he would fall madly in love with Gaby at first sight, acting as if he had the emotional maturity of an adolescent half his age. And she is a hard boiled, gold-digging mistress of an older man, so true love at first sight does not suit her very well either.We are not supposed to like Slimane, but I kept pulling for him to catch Pépé and put him in prison as he deserves. But nothing so mundane. When Pépé realizes he cannot have the woman he loves, he carves himself up with a knife. Oh well, at least the bad guy died in the end.

Pepe le Moko is a tragic figure -- his criminality has made him godfather of the Casbah but happiness eludes him because the instant he leaves he'll be nabbed by the cops.Powerful as he is, Pepe has no friend -- not the gypsy woman (well acted) who believes she loves him, nor the police inspector with whom he engages in homo-erotic repartee. Informers are snuffed out in the Casbah with impunity but they are in ever-replenishing supply.The ambiance of the Casbah is a character in itself here -- one of great allure and mystery. The bedazzling kept woman for whom Pepe lusts is less a love object than an irresistible reminder of the world he has lost.Jean Gabin's Pepe is a masterpiece of sexual appeal, savoir faire, and brilliance. Just when we think that love has befuddled him, we see that Pepe has outfoxed us again.He does manage to escape -- but how he does so ends this film on a shockingly unexpected yet triumphant note.

It is true what they say, that this is an early French film noir, before the term film noir was even invented. Jean Gabin is mesmerizing as the charismatic gangster Pépé, who has been holed up in the Casbah of Algiers for two years and unable to get out because only there can he successfully evade the police raids by leaping over the rooftops. The intensity of his stares is well captured on camera by director Julien Duvivier, who worked with Gabin so many times and knew him so well. The film was made on location in Algiers, Algeria being then a French colony. The film is thus marvellously exotic and evocative of the Casbah, more so than the later film which was also set in the Casbah, BATTLE OF ALGIERS (1966). Not that the Casbah is in any way flattered by this film, as the characters are continually cursing its lice and its filth. This film was remade in English the following year as ALGIERS (1938), with Charles Boyer as the gangster and Hedy Lamarr as the femme fatale Gaby. Then it was remade again in English as CASBAH (1948) with Tony Martin as the gangster. We can thus chart a steady progression of decline in quality, starting with the original and ending with the second, and rather faint, carbon copy, all based on the same novel by Henri Le Barthe. In this original version, the 28 year-old Mireille Balin plays the femme fatale character Gaby with sizzling intensity. (The story of what happened to Balin in her private life is deeply disturbing, and those who wish to know about it should read her bio on the database.) When Balin and Gabin look at each other 'in that way', we witness en electron in collision with a positron. Inès, the gypsy girl who loves Gabin, is played by Line Noro, who despite her Italian name was French, born in Lorraine. She is continually distraught over the restless 'cabin fever' which is driving Gabin mad with frustration, cooped up as he has been for so long. But when he meets Balin by chance, he is driven even wilder, this time with uncontrollable lust. But that lust represents freedom. He and Balin begin discussing districts and particular streets of Paris and work themselves up into a frenzy of memory for the city they love, and from which they have both been exiled for their different reasons. These scenes remind one of the scenes in Clouzot's film THE WAGES OF FEAR (1953), in which Yves Montand, another French exile in the middle of nowhere, reminisces with one of the other characters in the film about his favourite street near Place St. Michel. If you take French people away from Paris for too long, they quickly become maudlin and go to pieces. And Paris, perhaps more than any other large city in the world, is defined by its particular locations, its specific streets, to those who love it. Nowhere so much as in Paris is the charm of each separate spot so alluring. As Gabin and Balin (strange how similar their surnames were!) work themselves up into a lather of memories of Paris, the unattainable Balin, who is staying in a hotel outside the Casbah, comes to represent for Gabin the equally unattainable Paris, and the impossibility of freedom to roam, so that like a caged panther he strides with manic desperation back and forth, back and forth, as his gypsy gal sees clearly that his doom is coming. And his doom means the end of everything for her, unless she can somehow prevent it. Gabin snaps, bringing on a cascade of dramatic events. This is an excellent film, but not a great one.

The term film-noir didn't got handled until the '40's but this term would also really apply to this movie. It features all of the film-noir ingredients with its story as well as its atmosphere.The movie isn't as smooth or expensive and good looking as an American movie but otherwise there is not much wrong with it. It features a typical crime story in which a Parisian gangster hides in Algeria. Combined with this get the usual factors such as romance and a tough main character, who of course also shows his humane side. It has a solid story that is typical for the genre and therefore for the regular genre viewer won't feature many surprises in it but it's for them also nice and interesting to see how this typical film-noir ingredients all got handled in a '30's, before the film-noir got even really truly invented.But because the movie isn't American this of course also means that this movie is a 'different' one to watch. It features often some more interesting camera-angles and style of editing. It makes some of the sequences really great to look at. It also has a good and pleasant pace and is skillfully being directed by Julien Duvivier.It's also a movie that got greatly carried by its principal actor Jean Gabin. He plays his character in the right way for the movie. He's a criminal but you still like him. It's a great character played by a great actor. Not all of the supporting actors are just as good however and act in a more typical kind of '30's over-the-top acting style, though the movie does feature some more great characters.The movie got for some part shot in Algeria itself but some sequence are also sometimes painfully obvious studio-work. It's the foremost reason why the movie at times has a sort of cheap and less smooth look over it. The movie did became a success though and even managed to get an American release. This success inspired Hollywood to make one year later an American remake of this movie, called "Algiers", starring French born actor Charles Boyer and Hedy Lamarr.A real fine late '30's French crime drama, which really can be seen as an early film-noir.9/10http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/