Zouzou

Basically a vehicle for Josephine Baker, who bubbles effervescently through some Busby Berkeley-ish production numbers, and also gets to sing her classic 'Pour moi, y'a qu'un homme à Paris', with a tearful eye on her adored but roving-eyed foster brother. It is Gabin who really catches the eye in this part, with his persona already almost fully developed. Impassive as ever, he is first glimpsed as a soldier in an oriental dive, reigning benignly over the pretty girls but still a stranger in a strange land. Then the fatal encounter with his dream during a bal musette waltz which he hoarsely croons in her ear; and finally the misunderstanding, the accusations of murder. Happy ending apart, you can already see the romantically doomed gangster of Pépé le Moko, stubbornly proletariat, eternally yearning for the purity denied by the world in which he is mired.