RyothChatty ridiculous rating

Exoticalot People are voting emotionally.

TrueHello Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

Phillipa Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

ElMaruecan82 There is no doubt "Pepe le Moko" will feel familiar to you if you already saw "Casablanca", "Morocco", "Battle of Algiers" or plain "Algiers", the remake of 1938 starring Charles Boyer. But for me, it felt familiar on a deeper level; the introductory presentation of the Kasbah opened the dusty box of my childhood memories set in the Old Medina of Rabat where we came to visit the great-grandparents, so deep I can smell it. From my own experience, I could relate to the feeling of helplessness in these labyrinthine white streets, as a child losing the firm grip of an adult's hand.And this is why "Pepe Le Moko" is such a celebrated classic, because it has the star: Jean Gabin, the character but more importantly; the location. Pepe is a gangster who slips through the Metropolitan Police net to hide in the Algerian Kasbah like French Resistance members would soon hide in the scrub to escape from Nazis. And Julien Divivier's film was released two years shy away from World War II when French police would be accessories to the most shameful pages of French history. That this film makes us root for the 'gangster' figure instead of the pitiable policemen feels like a prophetic masterstroke and a stamp for modernity. It's like Henri Jeanson, the writer, had anticipated the moment where people would root for the outlaw rather than its enforcer.In fact, this sentiment is vividly present in French cinema of the 30's, carried by the wave of poetic realism, a genre that couldn't do without slightly romanticized figures rooted in the everyday world of the 'little people'. American 'realistic' cinema was incarnated by the Warner's gangster classics but their legacy was tarnished by the narrative interference of the Hays Code. Even in French movies, crime didn't pay, but the film trusted the audience's intelligence. Realism in America made the gangster an amoral thug, a coward or a loser killing his own men, in France, the outlaw was a bad person on a social level but with layers of goodness and honor beneath. The outlaw, as portrayed by Gabin, was the quintessential tragic figure, a man who couldn't face the present without ignoring the burden of the past. And the Kasbah was the perfect place for an exile.Indeed, people of the Kasbah all have a past to bury, there's a scene that doesn't add much to the film except to show that everyone in Algiers had left something behind, an old madam burst into tears when listening to an old song about Paris, a sort of "Where all the …. Have gone?" It's hard to believe from our perspective that even in the thirties, people would be nostalgic, but nostalgia is the predominant theme in the film. Pepe is nostalgic of the Parisian streets he left, the metro stations, he's a sort of Rick Blaine who constantly reminisces about the old Paris. In fact, this is why Divivier's classic, almost 80 years now, still holds up very well today, because it embraced standards that would inspire classics, above them all: "Casablanca", and establishes staples of gangster or exotic romances: smoking and gambling crooks, corrupt cops, sneaky informants, overcrowded brothels, gold-hearted prostitutes, elegant mistresses and so on and so forth.It's a colorful gallery of characters but they aren't just archetypes, each of them is one of the many pieces of a game with the Kasbah as the chess board, as a character of its own; it gives the film its unique touch and is such an indispensable element, it inspires one of the greatest introductions from any film. When the policemen describe how tough it will be to find Pepe, it's worthy of a historical document, it has this value actually, establishing the Kasbah as a melting pot crowded with faces of all over the world, a succession of labyrinthine stairs and with the women dominating the terraces. The description reminds of Colonel Martin in "Battles of Algiers" explaining why it'll be tough to spot the terrorists, the Kasbah isn't just here to give the local flavor, it is a urbane jungle where we feel like home because we've seen "Casablanca".Yes, there's a sneaky fez-wearing cop double-dealing expert who speaks with the same hypocritically suave tone as Captain Renault, Pepe is a Blaine in terms of masculine aura and popularity, a virile tough guy who'd stick his neck out for nobody before discovering his soft spot for a classy mistress played by Mireille Balin and who's got nothing to envy from Ingrid Bergman. The thirties belonged to Gabin as only Gabin was capable to exude this manly charisma while being as gentle and tender as ever. This film is perhaps his most celebrated one at a time where he also played in Carné "Daybreaks" and Renoir's "Lower Depths". But in "Pepe Le Moko", he's in his most emblematic role in his pre-war period.And speaking of war, the film is also marked by its era through the beautiful face of Mireille Balin the Ilsa of the film, a distinguished woman, not the gypsy prostitute, that will steal Moko's heart. The actress would fall in a love with a German officer, be raped by Resistance members and then despite a few little come-back attempts, will be totally abandoned by French cinema and only one representative will assist her funeral in 1968, after she died of alcoholism, in such a miserable state she almost escaped common grave. This is a woman at the peak of her glory but would be the collateral damage of the ugliest side of French resistance: blind and violent expurgation.So, the film might be about people confronted to their past, but it carries many premonitions of the war-stricken future, it's a product of its time, of timeless appeal.

Nin Chan It's not so surprising that this film originally bore the working title of "Les Nuits Blanches", as it certainly shares more than a passing resemblance to Dostoevsky's timeless tale and Visconti's mesmeric adaptation. "Pepe Le Moko" is, more than anything else, a love story, though it functions more as a commentary on the dynamics and nature of love than an exultation in its virtues. Like Dostoevsky's hapless dreamers, Duvivier's characters are in love with phantoms, incorporeal fantasies that they project onto canvas of flesh. Naturally, idealism and reality are hopelessly estranged, and efforts of reconciliation can only precipitate frustration and tragedy.Pepe le Moko is a tormented fugitive and exile, liege lord of a vice-ridden, sweltering microcosm and crown fool. Like the swaggering, stolid gangsters of Jean-Pierre Melville, Pepe is a victim of himself, prisoner of arbitrary codes of masculinity and honor. His hauteur are undermined by the minuteness of his empire, itself infested with conspirators eager to sell him to the police. His "freedom" itself is pathetic enough to be risible, venturing outside the insular sanctuary and he is fair game for the police. Clinging doggedly to whatever semblance of liberty he has left, Pepe acts out a tragic comedy within the confines of his circumscribed universe, his roles of Don Juan and Capone underscored by pathos and ennui.When a flighty Parisienne catches a glimpse of the fabled kingpin, she becomes instantly infatuated with his imperious manner, seeing him and the bloodthirsty world he represents as salvation from her stuffy bourgeois existence. In Aeschylean fashion, neither Pepe nor said femme fatale love one another, they merely love effigies, ideals. The female is Pepe's solitary conduit to his beloved Paris and the only confidante for his crippling homesickness. His indifference to her extravagant jewelry reveals the absolute arbitrariness of his criminal pursuits, a mere pretext for action in such boring climes. Yet, the viewer is acutely aware that the Paris Pepe longs for no longer exists, if it is represented by the addle-brained, vacuous Sybarites that his lover surrounds herself with. The mere fact that a Parisienne would exalt him as her liberator should itself alert him to the folly of his reveries. Sustained by his illusions, Pepe withdraws further from reality. Everything about Jean Gabin's character makes me want to cry- his fragile stoicism, his crestfallenness, his obsessive delusion, his self-destructiveness.There are some who would take issue with the implicit ethnocentrism in the "Casbah" imagery. Note that this was an adaptation of a novel written in the midst of fervent pro-colonial sentiment, and that, in Duvivier's hands, the Casbah becomes mythic, poetic, allegorical. The impenetrable veils of smoke are almost Cocteau-esquire, giving the film the sensuous richness of Scheheradze's chambers. At the same time, the mists accent Pepe's self-deception- his entire persona is fictive, as are his illusions of freedom and escape. The sequence of Pepe's fevered sprint toward the harbor may be maligned nowadays for its visual sloppiness, but I think it's absolutely marvelous, masterfully capturing Pepe's childlike impetuousness. As Pepe courses onward, the surrounding Casbah gradually blurs around him, the juxtaposition of back/foreground indicating his flight from one fantasy into another, as well as highlighting the sheer depth of his delusory monomania and tunnel-visioned myopia. As psychology transformed into image, this one works.Beyond everything, Pepe Le Moko is a deeply cynical film, its slightly jaundiced perspective on human nature reminding one of Clouzot, Hitchcock and Joseph Conrad. The entire film is a tight lattice of interwoven self-interests- look at the Parisienne's corpulent, autocratic husband, the obsence, oleaginous Regis and the servile, serpentine Slimane for some fine examples of the vile characters on display. Even the character who loves deeply and truly, the forbearing Ines, would rather betray Pepe than be estranged from him...a commentary on the covetous, self-serving nature of love, perhaps?I haven't seen any other Duvivier films, but he doesn't seem to be the humanist that Becker and Renoir are, and I can appreciate him all the more for that. Like Becker, he seems to have been largely misunderstood and under-appreciated in his time, at least on these shores, and the interview appended on the Criterion disk suggest that he was a retiring and modest sort, never garrulous about his art (and hesitant to even think of it as art, which it assuredly is). What a film this is....a terrific achievement. I love the golden age of French cinema, and this affirms and reinforces that affection.

bensonmum2 Pepe le Moko (Jean Gabin) is something of a celebrity in the Algerian Casbah he calls home. The locals do what they can to protect Pepe and keep the police off his trail in hopes of winning his favor. But how long can Pepe remain hidden in the maze-like Casbah? The French police have a plan to use one of his best friends to lure Pepe out of the Casbah and place him under arrest. Complicating matters is a Parisian woman visiting Algiers that Pepe finds himself smitten with. She's different from what he's come to know in Algeria. She makes him dream and long for days of freedom outside the Casbah walls.To begin with, to anyone who recommended Pepe le Moko – a big fat thanks. It's a great movie that I probably would have never even heard of had it not been for some of the good people at IMDb. As a budding fan of film noir, I was hooked from the minute the movie began. The plot kept my interest throughout. Never did it seem slow. I've only seen Jean Gabin in one other movie (Touchez pas au grisbi), but I'm quickly discovering what a talented actor he was. His Pepe is a very believable character. He plays Pepe with style, feeling, and, when called for, viciousness. Director Julien Duvivier uses the twisted roads and alleyways of the Casbah to create a one of kind setting for his film. I've actually been in a place like this during a visit to Tangiers, and the Casbah in Pepe le Moko gave me that same feeling of a place you would easily get lost in.In many ways, Pepe le Moko is ahead of its time. First, I honestly had no idea that something so seemingly American as film noir could be traced to 1930s French cinema. Many of the American films of the next two decades can surely be traced to Pepe le Moko. Second, much of the subject matter in the film is certainly something an American movie of the 30s would never touch or discuss so openly. Themes of sex and adultery wouldn't be commonplace in American cinema for years to come. And finally, some of the film techniques used by Duvivier give the film the look of something made years later. The camera has a fluidity and style I don't associate with the 30s when so much of what was being made still relied on the old "plant and shoot" technique of the silent era.

Galina "Pepe Le Moko" (1937) directed by Julien Duvivier - is a wonderful movie with the great performance from very young Jean Gabin. It just happened that I've seen several movies with him in the older age where he is serious, not very talkative man with the head full of grey hair and I like him in the later movies, too but it was so much fun to see him as Pepe - young, charming, dangerous, smart, brutal, irresistible, and so much in love with Paris that he'd lost forever. As much as I enjoyed the film as an early noir and crime, I think it is about the longing for home, about the nostalgia and as such it is even more interesting, deeper, poignant that just a noir. The celebrated film director Max Ophüls, who knew a lot about nostalgia and immigration said about Paris, "It offered the shining wet boulevards under the street lights, breakfast in Monmartre with cognac in your glass, coffee and lukewarm brioche, gigolos and prostitutes at night. Everyone in the world has two fatherlands: his own and Paris." I could not help thinking of his words when I watched the film. There is one scene that almost reduced me to tears - a middle-aged former chanteuse plays one of her records on a gramophone and sings along with her voice that has not changed at all even if she looks nothing like the picture on the wall from the days of her youth. The time may play very nasty jokes with a woman - she may get fat or skinny, lose her teeth and hair but her voice will stay as strong or tender, ringing or melodious as it was in the long gone days that stay forever in her memory. She sings about Paris and there are tears on her eyes and the scene simply can't leave any viewer indifferent. There is another scene - between Pepe and Gaby the girl from Paris with whom Pepe falls in love (Mireille Balin). They talk about Paris remembering different places which are dear to both of them, and in the end, they both named La Place Blanche where they both belong and not in Algiers's Casbah where Pepe is safe and he rules the world of criminals but can't forget the sound of Metro in Paris. When Pepe wants to tell Gaby that he loves her, he tells her that she reminds him of Metro in Paris... I have not even mentioned how masterfully the film was shot by Julien Duvivier and how well it was acted, how fast it movies, and there are so many wonderful scenes that I have not mentioned...Great, great movie.