Hollywood remake of Julien Duvivier’s PÉPÉ LE MOKO/’37 is a near facsimile of the original; and none the worse for it. It’s the old swoony fatalistic chestnut about Charles Boyer’s Parisian jewel thief, now an ex-pat, safe as long as he stays inside ‘the Casbah,’ a shut off section of Algiers vertically populated by exiles, transients & the criminal underworld. Supported by a motley gang of thugs, loved by a local girl, homesickness is driving Pépé stir-crazy, a condition made even worse when he falls hard for Hedy Lamarr in a spectacular Hollywood debut as Gaby, a tourist from Paris worth the risk of leaving the Casbah . . . exactly what the police are hoping for. Wonderfully cast, with most equaling the line-up in the Duvivier French pop classic. (Swings and roundabouts on the ones who are significantly better or worse: Lamarr, never better and easily topping Mireille Balin; but Nina Koshetz not a patch on Fréhel in the French film.) What does go missing in John Cromwell’s Hollywood redo* is a certain ineffable Algerian texture caught by Duvivier even though both films are pure studio artifice with a few establishing location shots. (Some reappear here! Producer Walter Wanger getting all the rights, but alas not keeping them as the film has fallen into Public Domain. There’s a pretty clean edition on Film Detective.) Unique to ALGIERS? A chance to enjoy Boyer crooning a happy love song! Grab it.
SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Ironically, Cromwell was on the other end of the same copycat treatment when M-G-M remade his 1937 Ronald Colman PRISONER OF ZENDA for Stewart Granger in 1952 with director Richard Thorpe.
DOUBLE-BILL: Many similarities in here with Tay Garnett’s fine, fatalistic romance ONE WAY PASSAGE/’32 with William Powell & Kay Francis in peak form.
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