Razzia sur la Chnouf (1955)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Razzia sur la Chnouf (1955) – H. Decoin

As I understand it, after all of his successes for Renoir and Carné & Prévert in the 1930s (not to mention Pepe le Moko), Jean Gabin had a bit of a lull in his career until his comeback as a world-weary gangster in Touchez Pas au Grisbi (1954) for Jacques Becker (a masterpiece).  Then began a spate of French noir or gangster films where he was equally likely to play a cop or a criminal. In Razzia (the title translates as “Raid on Drugs”), he is another aging gangster returning to France after a decade spent overseas, largely in the US.  He is hired as an enforcer for boss Marcel Dalio, charged with applying some discipline to his drug racket, while acting as the proprietor of a bar/restaurant.  So, Gabin (playing Henri Ferré from Nantes) begins making the rounds, meeting the chemist, the delivery men, and the dealers, pressuring them to pick up their game and increase sales. As viewers, we are treated to some pretty lurid scenes (as far as 1955 goes) and director Henri Decoin doesn’t pull his punches when showing the negative effects of heroin on the customers and crooks. Lino Ventura (later a star in Jean-Paul Melville’s Sixties French noirs) and Albert Rémy are two gunmen paid by Dalio to assist Gabin but they also don’t really trust him.  Indeed, we also feel that Gabin might be looking after his own interests as much as (or more than) Dalio’s. Yet even after getting beat up by the cops, Gabin plays everything cool and methodical (including his no-nonsense seduction of bar hostess Magali Noël). Perhaps you’ll see the end of the film coming and perhaps you won’t.  It doesn’t surprise.  But what is essential about this film is its mood – the noir vibe. I wouldn’t rank it with the best of the genre (such as Rififi which came out the same year) – but it is a welcome invitation back to the smoky underworld of Paris.