I have now seen two French movies (from the same year in fact!) starring Jean Gabin that appear to have had an influence on Casablanca, my favourite movie. The more notable of course is The Grand Illusion, which features a scene in which French prisoners of war defiantly sing “La Marseillaise” that of course was repurposed with a similar context in Casablanca for one of the most powerful moments in cinema. And then there’s Pépé le Moko, a movie that shares several aesthetics with Casablanca and even a similar sense of urgency for escape. Though this titular character is nowhere near as virtuous as any of the three leads of the later film.
Made in 1938 by Julien Duvivier as part of the movement in France known as poetic realism driven by the likes of Jean Renoir and (however briefly) Jean Vigo, Pépé le Moko is a very Hollywood kind of movie. It makes sense that it was quickly remade in America a year later as Algiers -in which Charles Boyer’s performance as the lead character, evidently more of a lothario than in the French original, became the template for Pepe Le Pew of Looney Tunes fame. A curious legacy for a movie that is a pretty straight melodramatic tragedy though told in a just plain pretty style.
Pépé is a wanted criminal in Algiers whom the local police have spent two years trying to catch as he has through a network of allies managed to hide safely within the Casbah -the historic fortified quarter of the city. It is believed that once he sets foot outside it’ll be far easier to be caught, so he has been stuck there while longing to escape home to his beloved Paris. One officer, Slimane (Lucas Gridoux) has a cordial relationship with him, though vowing to arrest him the moment he leaves the Casbah, the inevitability of which is set in motion when Pépé falls for the beautiful Parisienne Gaby (Mireille Balin).
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Duvivier does well at setting a very claustrophobic atmosphere that is nonetheless enticing. The film was mostly shot near Paris, but replicates very authentically the bustling exotic environment of the north African port sequestered within the imposing yet fascinating structure of the Casbah. We see its labyrinth contours, jazzy clubs, and industry, its people and their lives and work -but through the lens of Pépé, we see the prison that it is as well; the historic walls like giant barriers, Venetian blinds like the bars of a cell -the irony of course that Pépé restricts himself to the quarter precisely to avoid those real bars. He has forsaken his freedom regardless and even in the diversity and beauty of the Casbah, it is a jail as much as any space.
The photography of this is excellent and the settings themselves, even in their luxuries, are imposing. That sense of danger paired with the intrigue, again like Casablanca, is tantalizing. The romance is more stoic however, as Gabin refuses much overt emotionality. And yet, his attraction to Balin's graceful beauty and cosmopolitan air is easy to invest in. Most of their amours are in reminiscence, longing for Paris and a life together in freedom. This is where the movie really pins its romantic character, a mark of this style of cinema that married grounded figures and the disappointments of life to lofty ideals. It is not so lush or dreamlike as something like L'Atalante, but Duvivier certainly gives over to such moments from time to time -most notably at the end when Pépé does ultimately leave the Casbah, and the world around him (through an interesting use of rear projection) becomes hypnotic and indistinct as he soberly risks everything to attempt this escape with Gaby.
Pépé is no hero in the vein of Valjean though, even with his shrewd Javert in the form of Slimane, casually waiting around for Pépé's attempt to hightail it. Theirs is an immensely compelling relationship as Slimane's confidence in catching Pépé sooner or later gives him great power in all of their meetings. In other ways he is even a Machiavel, commenting on the obstacles to Pépé's relationship with Gaby as though daring him to pursue her in a way that would get him caught. Through the film we see the fractures in his circle, the death of both a protege and turncoat simultaneously, that makes his situation more desperate. Of note is his most loyal companion Inès, played by Line Noro, his only voice of reason. But Pépé is not a smart man, he is a gangster -Gabin playing this propensity for violence as much as his usual idealism. A good exercise of range for the actor in the same year as his more conventionally heroic performance in The Grand Illusion.
There are hints of early film noir to be found in Pépé le Moko in addition to its round of other influential traits -though its ending is decidedly more bleak than even that genre usually got. It's a very curious, unfairly forgotten bit of 1930s French cinema -and anything that may have presaged the birth of Casablanca ought to be so commended.
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Perhaps the best political satire film of the modern era, Armando Ianucci’s The Death of Stalin is a movie that gets more funny -and sadly relevant- with every year. An absurdist interpretation on the ceremony and power struggles within Joseph Stalin’s inner circle in the Soviet Union upon his death in 1953, it is as biting and whip-smart as anything Ianucci ever conjured up on The Thick of It, but in the context of the lunatic cult of personality and egotism that pervades these acts of authoritarian succession. It makes cathartic mockery of the machinations and petty relationships between the likes of Nikita Khrushchev, Lavrentiy Beria, Georgy Malenkov and more, each trying to seize political and propagandic power in their own way -while skewering the entire system yet never minimizing its consequences. And truly one of the great comedic ensembles in recent memory, including Steve Buscemi, Simon Russell Beale, Michael Palin, Paul Whitehouse, and a scene-stealing Jason Isaacs. It’s a film that could honestly vie for being a successor to Dr. Strangelove, especially as -like in the case with that film- it comes to resemble more a baffling political situation we deeply recognize. Criterion would be smart to seize it themselves.
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