"Julien Duvivier's mysterious and passionately despairing 1937 movie is rereleased, with its luminous lead performance from Jean Gabin as a charismatic Parisian criminal hiding out in the labyrinthine Casbah of Algiers; he is protected there by the dense polyglot population of Indigenous locals that the French colonial authorities consider it imprudent to provoke. He is effectively given sanctuary, but also imprisoned in the unpoliceable, unknowable quarter that, like Polanski's Chinatown, is a place that baffles and thwarts the imperial powers-that-be."
"It was a film remade by Hollywood in 1938 as Algiers, which was the debut of Hedy Lamarr and made a huge star of its French lead Charles Boyer, who is much sleeker and more conventionally photogenic than Gabin (but forever stuck with the misquoted line: Come with me to the Casbah! always being purred by nightclub comedians). Algiers in turn inspired Michael Curtiz's Casablanca,"
Pepe le Moko (1937) centers on Jean Gabin as Pepe, a charismatic Parisian criminal hiding in the labyrinthine Casbah of Algiers, where a dense polyglot Indigenous population shields him from French colonial authorities. The Casbah functions as both sanctuary and prison, an unpoliceable, unknowable quarter that frustrates imperial power. The film established a poetic, noir-tinged template later remade in Hollywood as Algiers (1938) and influential on Casablanca. Gabin's feline, dandified performance contrasts with his working-class image. The narrative follows gang tensions, sexual entanglements, and tragic yearning, with characters Pierrot, Carlos, Tania and Ines shaping Pepe's confined, fatalistic existence.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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