MovieChat Forums > Pépé le Moko (1941) Discussion > Inspector Slimane

Inspector Slimane

posted 16 years ago by clivey6
12 replies | jump to latest

I liked this movie a lot but it seemed to be there was a glaring, well, not plot hole exactly but oddness. Slimane is a cop, he's on the inside of the Kasbah, he's mates with Pepe Le Moko it seems. He's quite a weasley fellow yet Pepe openly confides in him, even though Slimane makes no secret of his wish to reel him in. I couldn't figure this out, esp when Pepe is very canny about other potential informers.

To watch Slimane go about openly stirring things up is a bit exasperating.

[–] 16 years ago

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[–] clivey6 16 years ago

A decent, comprehensive answer, easypz! The homoerotic element bypassed me, but the King's fool theory I can see! Mind you, I was quite tired when I started watching this; it's a very talky film and with all subtitles, it was hard to keep up and see some of the body language/subtext.

[–] 16 years ago

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[–] Roist 14 years ago

Slimane, like Shylock is a frustrating, ambivalent, character. A French viewer of the period would immediately recognize him as a stereotypic Sephardic Jew. His entrance, silent, almost hunchbacked, and smirking, are an anti-Semitic stereotype. He is both Eastern and Western, dressed in coat and tie, but wearing a Fez and a djallaba hiked up into pantaloons.

Just as the Metropolitian French police look down on the pied noir police of Algeria, both look down on Slimane, who has risen to senior rank solely by being the smartest guy in the room; he knows it and they know it.(Slimane: Berber or Ladino (?)cognate of Solomon, the wisest of the Hebrew kings).

I agree that there is a homoerotic link between Slimane and Pépé, who share similar ambivalent relations to each other, mixing attraction and contempt. Pépé is drawn by Slimane's intellect and cunning and repelled by his epicene homosexuality. Slimane is attracted by Pépé's brutal masculinity and charm, but despises him for being a slave to his lusts, a slavery that Slimane knows will eventually bring him down. Slimane even tells Pépé that he has the date of Pépé's arrest in his calendar. So while the "civilized" European police run around accomplishing nothing beyond getting themselves shot, Slimane simply smiles and waits for things to run their inevitable course.

(In the interest of full disclosure and political correctness, I am an Ashkenazic (Eastern European) Jew. We're the yarmulkah crowd, but that fez sure is tempting...)

[–] 14 years ago

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[–] lewis-51 13 years ago

Interesting. I was totally unaware of this. Not speaking French and having to read subtitles really interfered with my viewing of this movie. I wish it could be dubbed in English.

[–] PillowRock 13 years ago

Of course, a lot of what the previous poster was talking about (such as the stereotyping in the visual look / appearance of a character) are *cultural* and not linguistic. It doesn't matter whether you're reading subtitles or listening to an English dub, that still isn't going to help you with that.

By the way, my personal reaction to the idea of an English dub is just: "Ewwwwwww!"
The American actor that I've most often seen Gabin compared to is Bogart. Like Bogart, Gabin is often fairly impassive physically, he tends to underplay things in terms of his facial expressions and body language. A huge amount of his performance is in the details of his vocal intonation, and you lose all of that when you go to an English language dub. (As a side note, facial expressions and hand gestures that feel perfectly natural when I see them with French speech just never seem to fit with English dubs. That's at least partially due to the differences in sentence structure and idiomatic usages between the languages screws up the relative timing of those things.)

[–] little_wing 13 years ago

I used to prefer dubbed films when I was younger. But once I started watching them with subtitles I realized how superior the viewing experience is. After watching a few dubbed films you'll quickly get the hang of reading quickly while listening to the actors.

Reaction time is a factor in this, so please pay attention.

[–] didierfort 11 years ago

I'm a bit surprised to read that Slimane has to be read as a "stereotypic Sephardic Jew". Nothing in the movie says that, among all not his name, which is Arabic.

If we admit he incarnates a stereotype, it is the one of the "Levantin" or the "Oriental" in French novels and films of that period, which in terms of Peoples could be just as well of Syriac, Lebanese, Arabian, as Sephardic Jew.

Besides, I'm very fond of Lucas Gridoux's performances, here or in "Panique", an other Duvivier's masterpiece (where Michel Simon plays an Ashkenazi Jew, it's certain).

And about the very trendy disclosure of homoerotic attraction, well... it's up to you. But mutual attraction and repulsion between Pépé and Slimane, which are obvious, can be read without any sexual inuendo. The two characters are sharing and exchanging their positions in a hide-and-seek game, or a more serious chase, a deadly hunt.

PS: what happened to the accented vowels, nowadays, on the IMDb boards? It's annoying.

[–] Doodlebuger 9 years ago

Roist,

Good analysis but neither the homoerotic part nor the sephardic jew elements are necessary to understand Slimane, as others have pointed out.
Small detail : Slimane is not wearing a jellaba (wide robe) but a saroual, which is a pair of slacks tight on the ankles, wide on the hip, with low "bridge" between the legs. A lot of young arabs living in France today are wearing this kind of garment. It inspired the Jeans where the leg separation is very low. In Ghardaya, a closed city on the edge of the Sahara, where the saroual is worne routinely, legend has it that when the men went on a "caravan" lasting sometimes several months, they left a saroual on the conjugal bed. If a baby was borne during their long absence, it was because the saroual did it. Not sure if the legend is authentic, but it is an interesting one.

[–] PoppyTransfusion 10 years ago

The discussion on this thread is interesting. I hadn't thought of Slimane as Jewish or that there were homoerotic elements. I can buy both though they don't influence me in the same way as they might others.

Slimane is an interesting character. At one point Grandpa describes Pepe's feelings as Shakespearean and this seems a cue to me that we are watching a tale of fate and folly unfold in which the characters are archetypes.

Slimane knows what Pepe's weakness is: His yearning to be free and go where he pleases. This is what he teases Pepe with and this is what he knows will be Pepe's undoing ultimately. In many ways Slimane is the monkey on Pepe's shoulder always urging him towards what he desires and danger. Gaby represents Paris and it is that rather than her jewels that Pepe desires. Aside from Slimane no one else appreciates Pepe's desire to be free.

Gaby is like Pepe. Trapped in a prison of her own device - money, material things, greed - but the cruel vagaries of the story, much as in Shakespeare's tragedies, means she never learns the truth and is duped. The way she clutches her ears as the boat signals cast off and the haunted expression in her eyes speak of her feeling imprisoned.

Why do you refuse to remember me?

[–] pshu4 8 years ago

Pepe and Slimane are two of the few intellectuals in the film that can understand each other even if they are gangster and inspector.

In addition, they are neither completely good/bad/ethical/unethical characters. Pepe, while a gangster, has a big heart and principles. Slimane, while an inspector, can be underhanded and focused on the ends rather than the means.

For comparison, Pepe's buddies, the other law enforcement characters, and the girls are simple-minded and do not have much character depth. They are very one dimensional. For both Pepe and Slimane they are uninteresting and not necessarily companions outside what they can physically provide (force and love).