Razzia sur la chnouf (1955)

Directed by Henri Decoin; produced by Paul Wagner

Henri Ferré (Jean Gabin), alias Henri le Nantais, has been summoned by Paul Liski (Dalio), the head of France’s illegal narcotics-selling operations. Those operations are in a mess: drugs are disappearing, middle-men are raking off profits, unreliable crooks are talking too much… Ferré is given plenary powers to do what needs to be done to clean things up. Complicating his job, though, are two reckless hitmen - Roger le Catalan (Lino Ventura) and Bibi (Albert Rémy) – and a watchful police detective (Pierre-Louis), who seems to know all of Ferré’s moves.

Gabin had just re-established himself in French cinema, after a fifteen year combined hiatus (in Hollywood and fighting in the Second World War) and dry spell (which featured several failed movies). This procedural (a ‘criminal procedural’, if you will, rather than a ‘police procedural’) continued his upward return. It would be wrong to claim that Gabin is the whole movie, since so many things work here, but he is certainly its centre.

Gabin created the French version of ‘middle-aged cool’, a continental equivalent of Humphrey Bogart. A little pudgier than he was in 1937’s highly successful Pépé le Moko (reviewed on this blog in March, 2023), Gabin is not yet a weary, half-resigned anti-hero; his Henri Ferré is vibrant, in charge; it is not unrealistic to see him casually pick up and win the heart of the much younger Lisette (Magali Noël). Gabin makes the character appear detached and seemingly unconcerned with his job, yet not someone anybody would wish to cross.

Other characters are well defined, though their time on the screen is much less. Lino Ventura shows his own screen presence in this, his second film (the first was the year before, also with Gabin). He plays a cop-hating assassin, who is far too ready to kill, for Ferré’s liking. Other characters, such as Léa (Lila Kedrova), a drug-dealer too dependent on her own merchandise; Birot (Armontel), a chemist who synthesizes the ‘white junk’, and Lisette, all come across as three-dimensional.

The depth of the characters, despite the brevity of some of their screen-time, is a tribute not just to the acting, but to the writing. The amorality of Ferré and others in his milieu might be off-putting to some viewers, though, since many of the people of this under-world are actually likeable, it comes across at least as more sympathetic than, for example, that of The Godfather. Interest is maintained not just with the drama, but with the story in which it unfolds: the various stages and departments of a drug organisation are convincingly depicted. There is unexpected black humour, too, for instance in the number of handguns swept out from under a restaurant’s tables after a police raid.

The direction is restrained. Violence is sudden and quick. Viewers may not see it coming, but when they do, the expectation builds suspense. For the most part, the direction gives almost a ‘day-in-the-life-of’ approach to Ferré’s activities, a criminal efficiency expert at work.

Though compared to Bogart, Gabin would probably come closer to James Cagney in American cinema; both were, by this time, hefty, past their physical prime, but compelling to watch, regardless of which side of the law their characters trod. And if viewers like a good Cagney film, they will like Razzia sur la chnouf.

(The full title means ‘Raid on the Dope’. I suspect that ‘chnouf’ is an onomatopoeia for the way powdered drugs sound when inhaled.)