SteinMo What a freaking movie. So many twists and turns. Absolutely intense from start to finish.

SparkMore n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.

Voxitype Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

Scotty Burke It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

Jackson Booth-Millard This French film was one I found listed in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, I saw later that the critics gave it five stars out of five, so I hoped it was one I agree deserves that recommendation. Basically notorious French gangster Pépé Le Moko (Jean Gabin) is a Parisian criminal on the run from the metropolitan police, and to escape them he has been hiding in and ruling the Casbah quarter of Algiers, where the local police cannot makes attempts to capture him, being surrounded by his gang and the women. Inspector Slimane (Lucas Gridoux) has plans to lure Pépé out of his refuge, and he sees his opportunity when he finds out the gangster is in love with the gorgeous mistress of a rich businessman, Parisian tourist Gaby Gould (Mireille Balin), and after two years of hiding he misses his freedom. To go ahead with this Slimane tricks Gaby into believing that Pépé has been killed, she was going to join him in the Casbah, therefore she returns to her rich lover, so Pépé finds out she is leaving Algiers he leaves his refuge, and that is when he is arrested. Also starring Line Noro as Inès, Gabriel Gabrio as Carlos, Fernand Charpin as Régis, Saturnin Fabre as Grandfather, Gilbert Gil as Pierrot and Roger Legris as Max. The story of a gangster making himself untouchable but then wanting to return to normality after falling in love makes for an interesting watch, I admit I could keep up with absolutely everything going on, perhaps because of the subtitles, but I can see most of the reasons why this inspired many classics later, particularly Casablance, so it is certainly a most watchable romantic melodrama. Good!

GManfred Yes, I know, a trite headline. Apart from the fact that I don't know much French, isn't it uncanny how many tales, fiction and non, have a woman at the heart of matters? So it is with Pepe Le Moko, another poor slob caught in a love affair which costs him dearly. And to think he was the toast of The Casbah, a local hero with all the money and women and friendship he could ask for.Director Duvuvier paints a vivid picture of the sprawling slum that is the Casbah, teeming with humanity and activity, a place that has become a prison - in an abstract sense - for Pepe. The movie sets a fast pace, with barely time to catch your breath as the tension builds towards a climax both anticipated and disheartening - as so often happens, we root for this appealing criminal, hoping the outcome will be different than we expect.Some have said that the film is a 'film noir' prototype, and I agree, even though the genre didn't start until a few years later. If we include it, it is one of the best - the website description of crime/drama/romance lends a mundane feel and doesn't do it justice.

JohnHowardReid Grim, shocking, realistic, yet undeniably romantic, Pepe le Moko has justly been hailed as one of the ten best films produced in France in the 1930s. The leads, Gabin and Balin, contrive to be both realistic yet poetic, aided by skillful direction, atmospheric photography and a haunting music score. Anyone who views this film first and then watches the Hollywood remake will notice how slavishly director John Cromwell duplicates both Julien Duvivier's camera angles and frame arrangements. And why not? In most cases, Duvivier's inventiveness was impossible to equal, let alone surpass. And as for the performances, with one or two exceptions—Boyer is the equal of Gabin, but his interpretation is geared to his far more romantic (in both senses of that word) screen personality—the originals outclass their imitators. Hedy Lamarr, alas, does not stand up to the wonderfully exotic but earthy Mireille Balin. It seems at odds with her screen image, but I feel Hedy brings a guileless innocence to the role, which is certainly interesting (and she looks great) but is not what the part demands. Cromwell has coached her to actually play against the script rather than with it, no doubt partly to assuage the Hollywood censor. In addition to the stars of the French version, three portraits really stand out in the support cast: Charpin as the venal informer, Lucas Gridoux as the sly, ostensibly friendly inspector, and Frehél as the overweight but still optimistic has-been. I love her nostalgic little song (just one of a few really memorable moments which are completely missing from the Hollywood movie).

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.