Justin de Marseille (1935)
Directed by Maurice Tourneur

Film Review

With its interminable gangster brawls, grimly realistic settings and familiar mix of likeable and unlikeable crooks, Justin de Marseille exemplifies the kind of gangster movie that became popular on both sides of the Atlantic in the 1930s. There are strong similarities with its American counterpart - best represented by Mervyn LeRoy's Little Caesar (1931) and William Wellman's The Public Enemy (1931) - but the film has a more recognisably noir feel to it. Director Maurice Tourneur had already made a number of crime films prior to this, most notably Au nom de la loi (1932), and these brought a much greater realism to the already hackneyed genre, through a grittier style of mise-en-scène that established the classic film noir look.

Before he began making films in France in the 1930s, Tourneur made his reputation as a film pioneer whilst working in American between 1914 and 1926. It was during this period that Tourneur made some of his finest films, including The Blue Bird (1918) and Victory (1919), the latter of which shows the influence of German expressionism and boldly prefigures the film noir aesthetic. After his move back to France, Tourneur's cinema lost something of its early romanticism and became much darker in tone, with expressionistic lighting bringing gloom and menace to many of his films, most visibly his fantasy-horror offering La Main du diable (1943). Justin de Marseille is a fairly minor offering in the director's oeuvre but it had a considerable impact on the development of the modern crime film, not only in France but also in Hollywood. Crime dominated the latter part of Tourneur's life. After his retirement from filmmaking (caused by a car accident in 1949), he spent the remainder of his career translating detective novels into French.

Film Synopsis

In 1930s Marseille, Justin makes a dishonest living as the town's most respected gangster. Loyal to those who serve him well, Justin has few enemies and he rules the town unopposed - until he gets into a deadly feud with an unscrupulous Italian rival, Esposito. The latter resents Justin's popularity and plans to have him killed, whilst helping himself to a large consignment of opium hidden in a coffin. The scheme backfires, allowing Justin and his criminal associates to escape with the stolen narcotics. Justin then comes to the rescue of Totone, an attractive young woman who has tried to kill herself by drowning. Once she has come to her senses, Totone is easily won over by the gangster's seductive charm, with the result that her lover Sylvio is driven to a frenzy of jealousy. Sylvio makes an attempt on Justin's life, but the hoodlum's murder is thwarted a second time. Justin's luck may be about to run out when he and Esposito meet up for a final showdown. One thing is now abundantly clear - Marseille is not big enough for them both...