Word: gabin
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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However, the arrival in Boston and Cambridge of two Jean Gabin films, both in the finest roman policier manner, should seriously damage the rating of such standbys as Wyatt Earp, Rawhide, Have Gun-Will Travel, and Gunsmoke. Gabin, of course, is the acknowledged king of French tommy-gun flicks. With his slightly paunchy and degenerate mien he is the very image of the slightly world-weary tuff guy, and the casual manner in which he slaps around both the guilty and the innocent is beyond compare...
...time at all, Gabin finds himself involved with a rather unsavory assortment of jigolos, impotent husbands, virgin wifes, etc. Unfortunately, the identity of the murder is revealed, by a peculiar habit of knuckle cracking, to the audience near the middle of the film, and much of the suspense is lost, especially in the final scene when Gabin gives the killer-suspect, expertly acted by Jean Desailly, one of the finest and most subtle third degrees in recent film history...
...French are very much given to psychology and the like in their film making, and Inspector Maigret has more than its share. Mother-son, husband-wife, wife-mother-in-law relations are explored somewhat to the detriment of the story, but Gabin manages to turn the whole pot-pourri into a first-rate show...
...finest French gangster flicks of all time is now showing. Razzia leaves nothing to be desired. The mystery which runs through the entire film does not reach its denouement until the very end, and there is enough violence to last all but the most sadistic for several weeks. Again Gabin is masterful, although he leaves the shooting to several excellently portrayed gangster types who expires at the film's end in a burst of machine gun fire...
Inspector Maigret (French). Jean Gabin keeps on his toes as Georges Simenon's flawless flatfoot, and Director Jean Delannoy's camera is a superb shadow...