Pépé le Moko (1937) – 3/5

Casbah in my eyes

„Pépé le Moko“ is a French film from 1937, so this one here had its 85th anniversary last year, which of course means that this is a really, really old film and depending on when you read this review of mine, we will be much closer to 100 maybe already then. Of course, it is also a black-and-white film, but not a silent film anymore. These days were fairly over around the time before World War II. The English-speaking countries also stayed with this French title here, but then again, the only really French word is the one in the middle and that is only two letters. The language spoken in here the most is also French, even if you will find brief segments of English if you pay close enough attention. I watched this movie on the big screen the other day where it was shown on the occasion of a Julien Duvivier retrospective. This is surely one of his most known career efforts and you can probably say this for almost everybody who was a part of the production, no matter if we are looking in front of the camera or looking at the crew behind the camera. This also includes the writers. Duvivier is part of the trio there too and the other ones La Barthe and especially Constant have worked on more than just a few other films, but this one here is surely one of the standouts, even if I also would not say it was a great film as you can see from my rating that is in the above-average territory. Luckily, World War II did not mean the end of their filmmaking careers.

By the way, this is not a long film at all as it runs for approximately 95 minutes. The aforementioned La Barthe you also find as part of the writing team that came up with the film „Algiers“ one year later and the reason is simply that „Algiers“ was an American production and English-language remake of the film from 1937. But if you look at the number of ratings on imdb, you will see that the French film, without Hedy Lamarr and without all these Oscar nominations, has almost twice as many and it is telling that this is also the one I got to see (first) at a movie theater. I am glad I went. One thing that came to my mind was that films taking place in North African cities were a big thing back then. Just look at „Casablanca“. I don’t even have to mention this I am sure, but there was definitely a fascination for this area of the planet during that time. Looking at the quality of the outcome here, I must say that here and there I was not totally sure if I can hand out a positive recommendation overall. I definitely wanted to though and I think that all in all the film was good enough for that. There is one crucial scene when a young character first disappears than returns with a bullet wound and eventually dies and we also watch what happens to the man (they suspect) is responsible for this. That was fairly tense there. You could say that Pépé in this film had many obstacles to overcome. And trust and allegiances were always at the center of the story there and we see how many people turn against him and collaborate with the police trying to hunt him down.

It felt almost difficult to see him as a criminal. We never really see specific acts of violence or how he actually breaks the law. The film actually starts at what was some kind of police headquarter and there we are told how much of an important crime figure Pépé really is, but with the exception of his charisma, we did not get any confirmation of that really. I still wonder what a Moko is. This was not explained during the film I think. Anyway, what is explained is that the man definitely has a soft spot for women. Many, many women apparently. One of them is a gipsy girl and she is the initial love interest for the title character, but already when the film begins or at least when Pépé is introduced in a fairly spectacular manner, he had already lost interest in her. This becomes even more obvious when he finds another woman a little later, one he really is interested in, but these women are in the end his downfall then too. His meeting with the new love interest is sabotaged and his former love interest is basically the one ratting him out then, so he is arrested by the police while his new loves leave on a big ship. This was really melodramatic there with his suicide and Inès afterwards saying this is not what she wanted (surely her feelings were hurt from a jealousy perspective, but she was not an antagonist by any means), also before that already with his screaming for his lost love, but the ship is too loud and she cannot see or hear him.

Of course, the previous meeting and how she thought there he was dead, was also a bit heartbreaking. I assume this would have stayed more in my mind if I had not liked the older gypsy girl more than the doll who Pépé is really crazy about. Props to Line Noro there who played Inès. I am still surprised how these two women (in contrast to the remake) are credited so far behind, at least on the title’s imdb page. But if we are honest, this is not a film that really gives us interesting female characters with significant depth to them. In general, if this film had gotten made in the 21st century, I am sure it would have gotten a great deal of hate from liberal Hollywood audiences. I can mention three examples there: They use the old N term for Black people here which was not a derogatory word back then really, but just a description of the color. They also make a negative statement and derogatory comment about one character’s weight if I remember correctly and there is also an implied statement of how one male character would physically (not sexually) abuse a female character if she does not do what he wants her to do. Again, not meant in a sexual way. So if you are looking for negative factors from this film, maybe you can find them there, even if I would say that it is kinda nice to not have to discuss every single slightly politically incorrect moment, so I will leave it at that.

On the opposing end of the quality scale, I would also say that this is not a film that has many actually great moments. I am not sure if it had a single moment or scene I would consider great, even if I liked the almost documentary-style introduction to casbahs in the beginning. With this opening, you could still feel like the film would focus on police work, but things turned out differently and everything that follows then takes place in Pépé home area, which of course made sense with the aforementioned inclusion of this lengthy Casbah elaboration. This is where the story moves then for pretty much the entire film. Overall, the decent moments were surely there and they were also frequent enough to outnumber the more forgettable scenes. This is why I give the film a thumbs-up and recommend checking it out. It does not need to be on a big screen. The cinematography and street recordings were not too memorable anyway, maybe also because of the absence of color still at that point. This is never a weak film, but I must still say that every rating I saw on imdb and elsewhere is a bit exaggerated. For me it was a relatively close call if I should judge in favor of the outcome here, but eventually I did. Above-average territory from beginning to end.