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Pépé le Moko

Director: Julien Duvivier
Year: 1937
Run-time: 1 hr 34 min

- It still blows me away how much versatility there was in French cinema of this period.  I like others think of the New Wave as the "peak" of French cinema, but there was so much to admire about the earlier works.  This film is the first on the list to feature Jean Gabin (who will reappear in the very next list film).  He seems to me to strike a rare balance between masculinity and emotionalism, and this film epitomizes that.  Here we have a dangerous criminal in the vein of Fantomas, to hear the police talk of him, who gives himself over completely to love.  It's a surprisingly sweet story, with a great setting and some interesting colonial subtext.
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