If your interest in French Cinema is peripheral you'll probably recognize the names of Jean Renoir, Jean Cocteau, Rene Clair and then begin to flounder, if you take a closer interest you'll also be aware of Abel Gance, Marcel Pagnol, Marcel Carne and, at a stretch, Jacques Feyder and Julien Duvivier but if you're a real buff you'll be right at home with names such as Pierre Chenal, Claude Autant-Lara, Christian Jacque and Henri Decoin. These men were the backbone of French Cinema in the first three decades of Sound film and any History of the subject that did not include at least a couple of titles from each name would be laughable. Decoin made Razzia sur le chnouf in between the eighth and ninth film he made with Danielle Darrieux and fittingly he made it with her male counterpart Jean Gabin - both began their careers in the early thirties and both became icons of French Cinema. After a brief hiatus following his self-imposed exile in Hollywood during the first years of the war Gabin had forfeited his status as Number One Male Box Office attraction and during the immediate post-war years his career faltered only to be revived spectacularly with Touchez pas au grisbi which allowed him to reinvent himself and move fluidly between gangster and cop in a series of policiers. Here he is reunited with Lino Ventura (who had made his acting debut in Touchez pas au grisbi) in a gritty (for the time) examination of the Parisian drug scene in the early fifties, complete with jazz score a la Bob, Le Flambeur. There's a nice touch that buffs will savor as Gabin drives past a sign noting the city limits of Le Havre; he had, of course, been there once before albeit as a passenger in a lorry in the classic Quai des Brumes. This is well up to chnouf (sorry about that) and highly enjoyable.
Review of Razzia
