172 - Pépé Le Moko (1937)

Our first Jean Gabin film!  He plays the eponymous thief, clever and charming, hiding out in the maze-like Casbah of Algiers - a hive of scum and villainy if there ever was one under the direction of Julien Duvivier.  Local and French police are helpless to smoke out Pépé and his merciless but loyal cohort until Gaby, a beautiful tourist tourist played by Mirielle Balin, catches his eye.  Obsession and desperation slowly turn his sanctuary into a prison, and the lackadaisically acute Inspector Slimane (played by the be-fezzed Lucas Gridoux) knows just how to lay his trap.  Noir, tourism, and colonialism meet-up in this fascinating film of 1937.

If you'd like to watch ahead for next week's film, we will be discussing and reviewing Ingmar Bergman's Winter Light (1963).