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In the greatest gangster film of all time, Duvivier brings to the silver screen a gripping tale of love, passion, friendship and loyalty, as Pépé le Moko (Jean Gabin) reclusively hides in the seedy, underground of the Casbah quarters of Algiers. Elusive and dangerous, Pépé is considered one of France's most wanted at-large criminals. However, upon meeting a beautiful "parisienne", Gaby Gould (Mireille Balin), Pépé discovers that his heart is in Paris. Willing to risk his life and freedom to pursue his new love, Pépé takes to the streets of Algiers to find Gaby.

An enlightening look at French Algeria in the early 20th-century, Pépé le Moko is a cultural and historical masterpiece as much as it is a classic film. Examining the diversity of the inhabitants of the Casbah and exploring its architectural layout, this film provides for an extremely interesting postcolonial, anthropological, even Freudian (architectural) reading.

The friendship that develops between Inspector Slimane (Lucas Gridoux), a native Algerian investigator sent to capture the fugitive, and Pépé adds an element of perplexity, as the inspector is caught in a crux of friendship and loyalty and his duty to the state.

What ensues is a heartwrenching scene between the disconsolate gangster pursuing his beloved Gaby while being pursued by his inspector friend and the French Algerian police. One of the greatest endings in the history of film, Duvivier exposes the sovereignty of the heart, even the heart of a brazen criminal.

Duvivier's best effort and the greatest gangster film ever, this film ranks in my top ten of all-time. To truly understand Humphrey Bogart, Edward Robinson, Robert Mitchum and Al Pacino, one must first discover Jean Gabin, the archetype gangster for the crime genre. Duvivier's masterpiece is a film that all lovers of cinema simply must see.

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.

9/10

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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.

"Pepe Le Moko" is an early film noir, coming several decades before the French themselves invented the term to explain atmospheric American crime films. And it is one of the best, a film ranking right up there with the work of Melville, Becker, and other top post war directors.

This is being billed in the US now as a sort of lost film. Actually, it wasn't lost. Hollywood simply bought the rights and kept it off American movie screens so it could release its own remake of it in 1938, retitled "Algiers." That wasn't a half bad film, made enjoyable for the most part because it was a very off-beat story, had great atmosphere and featured the breathtakingly beautiful Hedy Lamarr in the role of Gaby.

At first, when looking at this French original, you wonder why it seems so familiar. Then you realize that the Hollywood version is almost a shot for shot remake, copying almost everything. Everything, that is, but the performance of Jean Gabin.

Hollywood's version, which stared Charles Boyer, always seemed a little contrived, primarily because Boyer was just not very convincing as the tough Paris gangster who pulls a bank heist and flees to Algiers, where he takes up permanent residence in the Arab quarter, the Casbah. Boyer just didn't seem like the gangster type.

Gabin, who had played rough characters before and would go on to play many others, is perfect as the smart, charismatic, but sometimes brutal Pepe.

It is ironic that the French, so in love with gangster films that they copied American cops and robbers films of the 30s, actually made one of their own in that era that wound up being copied by the Americans.

This one is well worth seeing.

"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.

I found this film very well shot, particularly the opening introduction of the Casbah, with each shot representing the well thought out narration. However, the particular theme of the film that interested me was the role of women in the film. Having been made in the 30's, there is of course a varying degree of sexism, which we see throughout the film. Despite the fact the protagonist is a gangster, we still see a shocking display of behaviour towards women, but in a subtle light. There are various conversations between the men on the subject of women, and how they should be beaten and kept in their place. The most shocking part of this is the way they talk about it in the presence of the women. Pepe le Moko uses his partner like a piece of rubbish, and does with her as he likes, not caring how she feels. In conclusion, his character portrays a sly and cool gangster, but with his frustration at times, he can lose it, and our respect lessens for him.

A gang of thieves hide out above Algiers in the Arab section of the city, the Casbah, in "Pepe le Moko," a 1937 film - an homage to the U. S. gangster movie - that is often credited as the inspiration for the film noir craze that swept U. S. cinema.

In order to draw attention to the American version, "Algiers," producer Walter Wanger tried to destroy all copies, subsequently buying the rights to keep it off the screen. But you can't keep a good movie down.

Pepe le Moko (Jean Gabin) is wanted by the police, so if he leaves the crowded and maze-like Casbah to go into town, they will nail him. There is an inspector who keeps an eye on Pepe, Inspector Slimane.

Pepe and the inspector have become friends, but Pepe knows Slimane is just waiting for him to make his move. When Pepe meets the exotic and bejeweled Gaby, a situation presents itself where he might risk his freedom.

Pepe is the great French actor Jean Gabin, a marvelous-looking, rugged actor with tremendous magnetism. It's no wonder Marlene Dietrich chased him all over the world.

Gabin's Pepe is the forerunner of the Bogart persona - he's a confident, handsome man, dismissive of women and has the ability to be both funny and cruel. He lives with his devoted girlfriend, Ines, and is surrounded by his motley mob who are familiar with the seedier side of life.

There are some brilliant moments and great performances in this film, which is rich in atmosphere and interesting faces. The French star Mireille Balin, whose real-life story is more bizarre than any fiction, is Gaby, a kept woman who enchants le Moko as they talk about their great love for Paris, most especially, Place Blanche.

Line Noro is Ines, doomed to love and lose Pepe, and Frehel is Tania, a friend. In one of the best scenes in the film, Tania reminisces about her youth and sings along with her own recording. A wonderful artist. The entire cast is marvelous.

The director, Julien Duvivier, orchestrates the proceedings with tremendous style and tension, capturing the heat, the light and the sounds of the Casbah.

Often imitated - by "The Third Man," "Odd Man Out," "Casablanca," "The Time Of Your Life," "To Have And Have Not," "The Wages of Fear," -- and let's not forget Pepe le Pew - "Pepe le Moko" and Jean Gabin's Pepe stand on their own as hallmarks in film history.

A wanted gangster is both king and prisoner of the Casbah. He is protected from arrest by his friends, but is torn by his desire for freedom outside. A visiting Parisian beauty may just tempt his fate.

English author Graham Greene in a review of the film stated "One of the most exciting and moving films I can remember seeing... Raises the thriller to a poetic level!" According to a BBC documentary, it served as inspiration for Greene's acclaimed novel "The Third Man". This would be quite interesting. "Pepe" is seen as a precursor to film noir, but in my opinion "Third Man" is one of the greatest films of all time... if this film was a direct influence, it deserves to be studied by more film lovers.

Some say Renoir.Some say Carné.Some say Clouzot.Some will say..yuk ..Godard..

I say Duvivier.His career spans half a century,from the silent era to the sixties,full of detours and retreats.But when he broke through -and his epiphanies were many and various, (there are masterpieces all along his career;never until the very end he produced anything mediocre)he made brilliant films.

But those precious years just before WW2 were justly looked upon as the best French cinema that had ever been.And Duvivier was among the creme de la creme ,producing during this golden era a chef-d'oeuvre a year (la belle equipe:1936;la fin du jour:1939).But 1937 was Duvivier's year:he made not one but two classics :"un carnet de bal" and "Pepe le Moko" both rated four stars by Leonard Maltin.

"Pepe le Moko" 's screenplay is so simple it's a wonder Duvivier could make such a masterwork from such a script.More than the story itself,it's the atmosphere which matters ,and a bevy of colorful characters surrounding the hero,played by the director's favorite actor Jean Gabin :one often forgets that it's Duvivier who launched Gabin,the most famous French star of the era (and maybe of all time)in such works as "la bandera" (1935)and "la belle equipe" (1936).

"Pepe " takes place in Algiers ,in some kind of ghetto" la casbah" .the hero is a gangster who reigns in this underground world ,but we soon discover he is actually a prisoner:a cop,like a spider on its web, is waiting for him to leave his refuge to arrest him.Duvivier's camera work is dazzling ,using panoramic shots which depicts la casbah as a maze ;when Pepe finally leaves the place ,the background behind him becomes blurred ,then merges with the sea,the gate of freedom.More than a gangster story ,it's a tale of nostalgia.Pepe falls in love with a woman (Mireille Balin) "from the outside world" while talking with her about different places in Paris,ending with la place blanche where they both belong.There 's the harrowing sequence where a has-been chanteuse (Frehel) plays one of her records on a gramophone ,thinks of her glorious past,and sings the chorus with her youth's voice as her tears fall down.

There are also exciting film noir sequences:the informer (Charpin) ,more and more terrified ,as the room fills with men ready to kill him;his death against a player piano ;Pepe behind the gates in the harbor.All the final scenes had probably a strong influence on Carol Reed's "odd man out" (1947)

Remade as "Algiers" by John Cromwell(1938) ,Charles Boyer taking on Gabin's part.

In 1937 France, thief Pepe Le Moko (Jean Gabin) is hiding out in the city's notorious Casbah district. One step out of it and he'll be sent to jail. He falls in love with a high class woman, Gaby (Mireille Balin) but he must leave the Casbah to be with her...and the police are closing in.

This is a good movie...at times a great one, but not the masterpiece I've heard it is. It drags at times and some of the subtitles read pretty stupidly. Also there's some truly ugly sexism on display. But, it's well directed by Julien Duvivier and Gabin was one hell of an actor. He's handsome, intelligent and full of charisma. In one great sequence, he's so happy that he's literally singing and you see how it affects everyone around him. Also Balin is beyond beautiful and Lucas Gridoux (as a sleazy detective) and Gilbert Gil are very good. And the ending is shattering and very moving.

So...it's a very good French film.

It's just been reissued in a beautiful new print (as of August 2002)...try to catch it.

In the 30's, in Algeria, the charming Parisian gangster Pépé le Moko (Jean Gabin) rules in the district of Casbah. Surrounded and protected by the women and his gang, he is unattainable by the French and Algerian police forces, but also he has been imprisoned in the area for two years. The police unsuccessfully try to bring Pépé le Moko to the center of Algiers to capture him, and he misses his former life in Paris and Marseilles. The astute and ambiguous Algerian inspector Slimane (Lucas Gridoux) promises to arrest Pépé le Moko the day he leaves Casbah. When Pépé meets the French Gaby Gould (Mireille Balin), she represents everything he misses in his life, and he has a crush on her, bringing a fatal jealousy in his mate, Inès (Line Noro).

"Pépé le Moko" is a great film-noir, with a good romance and excellent locations. The screenplay is very well developed, showing clearly the maze where Pépé is trapped, and explaining each character very well. Jean Gabin has an excellent performance in the role of a seductive criminal; Mireille Balin is extremely elegant, wearing beautiful costumes; and Lucas Gridoux is perfect in the role of the smart inspector Slimane. My vote is nine.

Title (Brazil): "O Demônio da Algéria" ("The Demon of Algeria")

Pepe le Moko marks a fundamental step in the aesthetic development of european cinema. It is also one of many great crime films of the thirties that is sadly overlooked in many critics top 100 lists.

Through it's lush sense of location and character Duvivier builds up a sweaty, exotic and complex picture of the underworld life of the Kasbah and the vast panorama of engagingly seedy characters especially Pepe le Moko, played with such effortlessly charismatic ease by Jean Gabin. But it is the rich claustrophobic atmosphere and the relentless pressure of the police that powers this film along to it's elegantly tragic conclusion. A masterpiece, and the clearest fore-runner to the whole film noir genre.

One of the classic crime fiction films ever made and a fantastic time capsule containing the distilled exotic ambience of French colonial Algiers. Like many French movie stars, Jean Gabin is no oil painting, but he does have a certain energy and charisma, and he needs to, in order to avoid being upstaged by the colourful menagerie supporting players who surround him. Wanted by the French authorities, master criminal Pepe le Moco and his gang take refuge in the seamy labyrinth of the Algiers Casbah, where the police can never quite catch up with them, but slowly his sanctuary becomes his prison... Meanwhile the wily local inspector bides his time until a woman provides the flashpoint that could prove to be Pepe's undoing. If you have enjoyed the feel of Casablanca you may well fall in love with this one.

French royalty Jean Gabin's signature role in this 1937 melodrama. Gabin lives in a seedy section of the Casbah in Algiers & is smart enough to stay amongst his own, knowing if he steps outside of his comfort zone, the cops will have him. The authorities known this as well as they take an opportunity to snatch him up when a French national goes missing in the Casbah & comes into Gabin's orbit where he thinks he can return home again as their relationship blossoms. If all of this sounds familiar, it does since Charles Boyer would remake the film (called Algiers) the following year. It's great to see where the original idea came from & since I'm very Gabin deficient (I did see The Grand Illusion), it's nice to trace the DNA of where the prototype began.

The atmosphere that Julien Duvivier creates in this film is absolutely fantastic. The narrow streets filled with multicultural characters, the flourish of details in the set designs, and how he portrays the seediness and danger of it all really stands out for a film from 1937, and holds its own against films from decades later. Jean Gabin has never been better than he was here, playing a gangster hiding out in the Casbah portion of Algiers. He's a ladies man who falls for the mistress of an older man, played by the radiant Mireille Balin, who the police hope to use to lure him out of hiding. He's very open about his playing around to his heartbroken girlfriend (Line Noro, who also shines), just as the film is open about letting us know that Gabin and Balin's characters have a physical relationship. There is a mix of toughness, romance, double-crossing, and expat sentimentality for Paris here, and it's all blended together into a very satisfying tale. The ending is excellent, that moment with the ship's horn especially. Oh, and look for the wonderful little scene Fréhel has when she says "when I feel down, I change eras ... I think of my youth, I look at my old photo and imagine it's a mirror" before winding up an old phonograph and singing along to it. Simply sublime.

Jean Gabin is a legend of French cinema, although he is not too well known in the US. Film students and other film aficionados will know his name, of course. This is his masterpiece, as the script, characterizations and location are first-rate. The location, the Casbah in Algiers, was one of the best locations to shoot a film in the history of cinema. In this film, Gabin is a sucker for love. In real life, hoods like him are seldom, if ever, a sucker for love. But this is the movies; so enjoy the fantasy.

Pepe LeMoko first was portrayed on the silver screen by French acting legend Jean Gabin. Despite American versions of this story starring Charles Boyer and Tony Martin, this became the standard the others are measured by.

The Casbah section of old Algiers is where noted thief LeMoko holds sway and the natives accord him demi-god status. No doubt from the fact he's paid off the native population well for protection. An attempt is made by the French occupiers to go in and take him out, but the police are made fools of.

It's hen protection becomes a prison. And the sight of a beautiful and chic French woman played by Mireille Belin sets Pepe to thinking about what he can't have.

Beilin is wonderful in the Delilah role opposite Gabin's Samson. But there's more to it than carnal desire. Pepe lives for his work, the planning and execution of a caper, pitting his wits against law enforcement. His real nemesis Inspector Slimane knows Pepe better than Gabin knows himself. Slimane is played well by Romanian actor Carlos Gridaux.

As for Gabin he creates in Pepe one of the great portrayals of his career. He led a life quite similar to one of the existential characters of his career.

Smartly directed by Julien Duvivier. Pepe holds quite well, as well as the Hollywood version starring Charles Boyer that came out th following year..

This is one not to miss.

"Pépé le Moko" is a romantic crime drama based on the novel by Henri La Barthe, and one of the defining works of French poetic realism. The film can also be seen as an early precursor to film noir.

Pépé le Moko is a notorious thief who has been hiding for years in the winding alleys of the Algiers Casbah. The police know where he is, but they can't arrest him - the locals protect him and offer their support. Though his days are filled with petty crimes and intrigue, his life inside the Casbah has grown stagnant. Inspector Slimane maintains a peculiar relationship with Pépé, believing that one day the thief will be lured out of hiding - and when that moment comes, Slimane will be waiting. One evening, a beautiful Parisian woman named Gaby arrives in the Casbah...

Director Julien Duvivier shows a masterful sense of space, shadow, and light. The set design is so vivid and realistic that the Casbah becomes one of the story's true characters - a labyrinth of streets and hideouts, a house of cards where romance and nostalgia collide beneath a claustrophobic veil of longing and entrapment. The sound, the glances, the silences - all weave together into a slow, dreamlike rhythm from which waking up doesn't come easily. Duvivier elevates this romance from narrow streets and criminal underworlds to a poetic level of Parisian longing.

The narrative moves through thematic layers that intertwine, offering the viewer a deep dive into the gray zones of morality. On one side, a fugitive lives the illusion of freedom and love, believing himself in control. On the other, the law reveals a strange sympathy for the outlaw - not out of pity, but because it senses a man aching for liberty.

Jean Gabin delivers a magnetic performance as Pépé - a dangerous yet charming man who controls his surroundings but whose heart aches for freedom and love. He belongs to the underworld, but only as a shadow in its corners. Pépé is deeply nostalgic, and Gabin captures this tension with emotional precision. Mireille Balin plays Gaby Gould, the radiant Parisian who enters Pépé's gaze like a beam of light. Gracious, reserved, and mysterious, she's part femme fatale, part symbol - representing freedom, love, and all that Pépé has lost. She doesn't need to seduce him. Her presence alone is enough to unravel him.

Lucas Gridoux portrays Inspector Slimane, a man of law with a poet's soul. For me, he is the most compelling character in the film - clever and composed, like a cat singing to a mouse not to pounce, but to gently coax it out of hiding. The audience slowly realizes that Slimane understands Pépé perhaps better than anyone else, and that his every move is guided by poetic subtlety.

Gabriel Gabrio gives us Carlos, Pépé's loyal friend who tries in quiet ways to shield him, knowing his comrade is crumbling under the weight of confinement. Fernand Charpin as Régis is the classic petty schemer, sniffing out opportunities to profit from every whisper in the Casbah. Line Noro is Inès - the woman through whose eyes we witness the aching soul of the Casbah. Her love for Pépé is fierce and unguarded. She fights for him knowing she may never win, yet she refuses to let go - even as she knows the Casbah never forgives.

"Pépé le Moko" is a film where heart and reason clash in a unique setting. Freedom without love breaks a man, but so does love without freedom.

This unforgettable stop in the alleys of longing, justice, and illusion remains essential viewing for all lovers of French romantic crime cinema.

The plot sounds promising enough at first: there's a wanted criminal, the infamous Pépé le Moko, lurking in the narrow streets of Algiers' notorious Casbah, played by Jean Gabin (always a solid choice for this type of characters), who's evaded capture for two years already, ridiculing French police forces and their informers at every turn, because the Casbah's inhabitants got his back. Then a Parisian lady turns up, and everything starts to go awry, culminating in a cliché-ridden "love at first sight"-story development and an ending the German language would best describe as pure Kitsch.

I was really looking forward to see this one, really wanting to like it; although there are a few memorable moments shining through here and there (like the old singer emotionally reminiscing her long gone days of youth over a record she plays), there simply isn't enough of what I need to classify it as a gangster movie: not enough grit, not enough action, barely any interesting character.

I just feel this could have been so much more, especially with the Algerian setting; the material was certainly there. Wasted potential, sorry to say!

The setting was great with the showing of the city but the story was a little silly. I had to laugh at the ending...a bit to melodramatic. It is a good film to watch to pass the time however. I would watch it again if given the chance.