The Casbah is accurately described under the opening credits as a neighborhood of Algiers that was built on a series of marine terraces and stops at the sea. It really was a seedy and fetid maze of dwellings that provided a home for criminals. In the Algerian War fought by the French, it was a hiding place for the nationalist rebels. I conducted a thorough investigation of the area by reading the first paragraph of the Wikipedia entry.
The police have been trying to nab the notorious criminal, Pepe le Moko (Charles Boyer). However, he has many friends who warn him when the police are coming, and there is a labyrinth of hidden passageways and tunnels that make it extremely difficult. An investigator comes down from Paris to kick some local butt.
He's met by frustrated local cops who explain the situation to him. The most memorable of the policiers is the smiling, philosophical, slightly oily Joseph Calleia. He's irresistible. The head honcho from Paris leads a police squad into the Casbah and Pepe and his friends run them ragged. Of course, if Pepe should ever stroll out of the Casbah, he's yesterday's news. Boyer knows he can't come out, and it fills his heart with melancholy because he yearns to go back to Paris. Ah, Paris -- La Place Blanche, La Gare du Nord, Les Filles de Joie, La Bourdaloue.
Enter a wealthy tourist, Hedy Lamarr, who sports a perfectly elliptical face with a vertical axis, and who drips with the jewelry that catches Boyer's eye. Her real name, of course, isn't Hedy Lammar. Nobody is named Hedy Lamarr. Don't kid yourself about that. She was born into a royal Austrian family and named Prinzessen Brynhyldr von Speck und Brodt. Please, it doesn't make her less appealing.
Among the denizens of the Casbah we can glimpse Leonid Kinsky. He was one of two of Hollywood's resident comic young Russians, the other being Mischa Auer. Vladimir Sokolov was Hollywood's ancient, mystic Russian -- the only one. He had a busy career.
It's an interesting film, not gripping, and a bit stagy, but generally well executed. The musical score is strictly pedestrian but the photography and direction are quite good. There's a spooky scene involving the deliberate murder of the pudgy trembling traitor, Gene Lockhart, done to the overloud tune of a rickety piano. At the opposite end of the scale, a chipper song by Boyer, "C'est La Vie," threatens to turn the romantic drama into a musical comedy. It's painful to watch. The large supporting cast does well by their roles.
Boyer is smooth and French, but it's hard to believe at this point in time that the ladies swooned with such abandon over Boyer and his accent. His resonant baritone was imitated by impressionists for years afterward. "Come Wiz Me...." Boyer has a serious problem, though. He has a native girl friend, Sigrid Gurie, who adores him but whom he shoves around and tells to shut up all the time. Well, we all know that Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Pepe should never have left the Casbah to intercept the woman of his dreams at the boat dock, at least not with Sigrid Gurie knowing about it.
The ending is a sea of bathos though, in a sense, Boyer does finally escape from the Casbah.
The police have been trying to nab the notorious criminal, Pepe le Moko (Charles Boyer). However, he has many friends who warn him when the police are coming, and there is a labyrinth of hidden passageways and tunnels that make it extremely difficult. An investigator comes down from Paris to kick some local butt.
He's met by frustrated local cops who explain the situation to him. The most memorable of the policiers is the smiling, philosophical, slightly oily Joseph Calleia. He's irresistible. The head honcho from Paris leads a police squad into the Casbah and Pepe and his friends run them ragged. Of course, if Pepe should ever stroll out of the Casbah, he's yesterday's news. Boyer knows he can't come out, and it fills his heart with melancholy because he yearns to go back to Paris. Ah, Paris -- La Place Blanche, La Gare du Nord, Les Filles de Joie, La Bourdaloue.
Enter a wealthy tourist, Hedy Lamarr, who sports a perfectly elliptical face with a vertical axis, and who drips with the jewelry that catches Boyer's eye. Her real name, of course, isn't Hedy Lammar. Nobody is named Hedy Lamarr. Don't kid yourself about that. She was born into a royal Austrian family and named Prinzessen Brynhyldr von Speck und Brodt. Please, it doesn't make her less appealing.
Among the denizens of the Casbah we can glimpse Leonid Kinsky. He was one of two of Hollywood's resident comic young Russians, the other being Mischa Auer. Vladimir Sokolov was Hollywood's ancient, mystic Russian -- the only one. He had a busy career.
It's an interesting film, not gripping, and a bit stagy, but generally well executed. The musical score is strictly pedestrian but the photography and direction are quite good. There's a spooky scene involving the deliberate murder of the pudgy trembling traitor, Gene Lockhart, done to the overloud tune of a rickety piano. At the opposite end of the scale, a chipper song by Boyer, "C'est La Vie," threatens to turn the romantic drama into a musical comedy. It's painful to watch. The large supporting cast does well by their roles.
Boyer is smooth and French, but it's hard to believe at this point in time that the ladies swooned with such abandon over Boyer and his accent. His resonant baritone was imitated by impressionists for years afterward. "Come Wiz Me...." Boyer has a serious problem, though. He has a native girl friend, Sigrid Gurie, who adores him but whom he shoves around and tells to shut up all the time. Well, we all know that Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Pepe should never have left the Casbah to intercept the woman of his dreams at the boat dock, at least not with Sigrid Gurie knowing about it.
The ending is a sea of bathos though, in a sense, Boyer does finally escape from the Casbah.