A Film Canon

Pépé Le Moko presents a prototypical noir cityscape, in the form of the traditional Casbah quarter of Algiers, introduced as a labyrinthine, infinitely reticulated space, necessitating a variety of oblique camera angles and occluded perspectives, both of which contribute to the claustrophobia produced by the absence of any stable vanishing-point. At the same time, this cityscape falls short of noir in its radical circumscription; or, at least, the possibility of such a circumscription. The narrative turns on the local police force's attempt to extract Parisian gangster Pépé (Jean Gabin) from this protective maze, by using a wealthy Parisian aristocrat (Mireille Balin) as romantic and economic bait. By forcing Pépé to make the symbolic choice between Paris and Algiers, Duvivier begs the question of whether the two are interchangeable; that is, whether the Casbah doesn't merely cipher a new, theatening and, above all, amorphous cityscape. To an extent, the film affirms this, if only because Pépé is so identified with the Casbah (every inhabitant seems to know and support him) and his lover with Paris, that the mere possibility of their conversation suggests some common denominator. Nevertheless, the conclusion affirms their separation, as does the pervasively orientalist tone, such that the topographical claustrophobia is ultimately mitigated by an affective openness, oscillating between the comic and the tragic, and best described as picaresque, which suggests that Pépé's experience is not that of the average urban subject; or, alternatively, that the opening description of the Casbah, which paints it as simultaneously overpopulated, and yet partaking of a more essential, supervening emptiness, is offset by a pervasive, flirtatious camaraderie, albeit one whose screwball-inflected solipsism anticipates the stark individualism of its generic descendents.