Jean Gabin was a brooding, rough working class anti-hero in France when his role as cool master criminal Pépé le Moko (France, 1937) made him an international star. Set in the Casbah of French Morroco, a labyrinth of alleys and termite-hole dwellings in an underworld slum that creates its own bustling, self-contained society within Algiers, […]
Un Carnet du Bal (1937), the story of Christine (Marie Bell), a recently widowed heiress who tracks down the young men who courted her 20 years ago at her first society ball, is one Julien of Duvivier’s most celebrated and beloved films, a melancholy meditation on memory and loss and disappointment. The title translates to […]
Poil de Carotte (1932), which translates to “Carrot Top,” is Julien Duvivier’s remake of his 1925 silent success, a mix of comedy and near-tragedy in the story of a sweet, spirited kid (Robert Lynen, superb) bullied by his mother, who favors the boy’s teenage brother and sister, and ignored by his disconnected father, who has […]
