It is powerful, muscular film-making, one of the great romantic dramas.

Interesting movement holds through the entirety. Life in the native quarter, with its squalor and intrigues, is particularly well presented and photographed.

Film noir as we know (and love) it is just around the corner from here.

Duvivier frames it as a tragic and moving melodrama that, following the specificity of poetic realism, finds its strength in the dazzling performance of Jean Gabin and in the orientalist atmospheres of Algiers's Casbah. [Full review in Spanish]