u/Incogcneat-o

Y'know, you think you live a good life with a mostly functional brain and then one day you're in your 40s and realize the movie your brain has filed under: "United Artists, 1957: Sweet Smell of Success" and spent 20 years avoiding because Robert Morse gives you the willies was ACTUALLY "United Artists, 1967: How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying" and instead of dodging a mediocre fosse musical you've been accidentally avoiding one of the darkest, most cynical, stylish film noirs ever made because you are, in fact, too stupid to live.

Fuck me it was so good. The cinematography, the Elmer Bernstein jazz score, Burt Lancaster's gently terrifying delivery..even Tony Curtis, whose charms are mostly lost on me, was as good as I've ever seen him in a mostly straight role.

I should've known something was up when I worked at a daily newspaper and people kept bringing up this title in a way that seemed super weird for a goofy office musical.

This is nearly as bad as the time I wanted to watch that cute romcom I briefly caught that had Kate Hepburn, a seaside vacation, and "Summer" in the name and got it in my head that the title wasn't Summertime but Suddenly, Last Summer WHICH IS A VERY DIFFERENT MOVIE.

Considering all the possible ways a 1964 British war epic set in the 19th century where we're supposed to be rooting for the invading British Empire against the native Zulu Kingdom could've aged badly, it is shocking how well this holds up to modern viewing.

It's neither especially patronizing nor especially jingoistic which means the tension can slowly ratchet up in the best possible way.

The acting is mostly quite good with a ton of golden-voiced Welsh stage actors making the most of the fairly minimal dialog. Sir Richard Burton --the goldenest, Welshest stage actor of them all-- voiced the opening and closing narration.

Michael Caine has his star debut as the co-lead and although it's wild to hear him speak with a plummy posh RP accent instead of his trademark Cockney, the minute he came on screen you could tell he was going to be a star.

There's something oddly David Bowie-coded about his performance, and it wouldn't surprise me a bit of Bowie had cribbed some of Caine's mannerisms --along with Cary Grant-- for his role as Jareth the Goblin King in Labyrinth.

It was shot in glorious Super Technirama 70, which is just as over the top as it sounds. The film LOOKS fantastic, especially on a projector.

The sound design was unusual and a bit eerie in a way that really worked to give a sense of desolation and eeriness, contrasted with the magnificence of the war songs from the combatants.

Pépé le Moko is a great gangster movie. Great gangster movies sometimes inspire remakes. Great gangster movies even occasionally inspire better movies.

But only Pépé le Moko has the misfortune to be a great gangster movie that inspired multiple English-language remakes --Algiers (1938) and Casbah (1946), a better movie --Casablanca, 1942-- AND a suuuper horny cartoon skunk.

Do I know Pepé le Pew was technically based off Charles Boyer's version of Pépé le Moko from the first remake? Sure.

Can I watch even one moment of Jean Gabin, the OG Pépé attempting to seduce Gaby, posh heroine, without thinking of Pepé le Pew sexually harassing a house cat for in glorious technicolor for 7 minutes? Absolutely not.

This hits much the same spot for me as Little Caesar (1931) or The Public Enemy (1931) because they all inspired the stereotypes I grew up with watching old Saturday morning cartoons. They're so damn good, but I can't get lost in them because the performances have escaped the screen and become cultural touchstones. Not just touchstones, parodies. So even though it wasn't played broad, it FEELS broad because it's been parodied for 60+ years.

But damn, that's one smooooth skunk.

Fritz Lang, baby, what is you doing? How is this both the MOST and LEAST Fritz Lang movie (or movies, it's a two-parter, with The Indian Tomb released two months after The Tiger of Eschnapur) of all time? Metropolis, M, Scarlet Street...and this.

It's got all the great Lang hallmarks: Masterful composition, brilliant camera work, a sense of encroaching entrapment, fate fucking everything up for everybody at all times.

And it's GORGEOUS.

But is it gorgeous in the splashy way that Orientalist epics of the era are gorgeous, or is it a commentary on the artifice of the splashy way that Orientalist epics are gorgeous? I don't even know at this point. As a connoisseur of camp, it doesn't read as camp (well maybe some of Paget's scenes) but it also doesn't feel earnest the way Black Narcissus or The River does.

What I DO know is that Debra Paget in her role as Seetha the Temple Dancer (it's okay that the German guy falls in love with her though, because she's half European) both dances and acts ALMOST as well as Britney Spears, which says a lot about her dancing --most famously the snake dance from The Indian Tomb-- and even more about her acting.