Directed by: John Cromwell
Starring: Charles Boyer, Hedy Lamarr, Sigrid Gurie, Joseph Calleia, Alan Hale, Gene Lockhart, Walter Kingsford
Based on: Henri La Barthe’s 1931 novel Pépé le Moko and adapted from the 1937 French film Pépé le Moko, directed by Julien Duvivier and starring Jean Gabin.
STORY
High above the harbor of Algiers lies the Casbah, a twisting labyrinth of narrow streets, hidden passages, crowded cafés and rooftops where outsiders can become lost almost as quickly as fugitives can disappear.
For Pépé le Moko, it is both sanctuary and prison.
Pépé is a notorious jewel thief wanted by the French authorities. Inside the Casbah, however, he is almost untouchable. He knows its alleys, its people and its secrets. The police may surround him, but entering his territory and actually capturing him are two very different things.
Pépé has built a life inside this strange little kingdom.
He has friends.
He has influence.
He has Ines, the beautiful and fiercely devoted woman who loves him.
And he has freedom — as long as he never leaves.
Then Gaby arrives.
Elegant, sophisticated and unmistakably connected to the glamorous European world Pépé has been forced to abandon, Gaby enters the Casbah while visiting Algiers with her wealthy fiancé.
The moment Pépé sees her, something changes.
Gaby represents more than another beautiful woman.
She represents Paris.
She represents fashionable streets, expensive perfume, elegant evenings and the life Pépé remembers from before the Casbah became his entire universe.
For Gaby, Pépé is equally intoxicating.
He is dangerous, charismatic and completely unlike the comfortable men of her own social world.
Their attraction is immediate.
And disastrous.
Inspector Slimane understands Pépé better than the other policemen pursuing him. He realizes that force alone will never capture the fugitive.
Pépé's weakness isn't greed.
It isn't fear.
It is longing.
The Casbah protects him physically while slowly suffocating him emotionally.
Gaby becomes the embodiment of everything outside those walls.
As their relationship deepens, Pépé begins contemplating the one thing he cannot safely do:
Leave.
Meanwhile, Ines sees exactly what is happening.
Her devotion to Pépé collides with jealousy and desperation as she realizes that Gaby may accomplish what the police never could, draw Pépé out of the Casbah.
The result is a romantic crime drama built around an irresistible trap.
Pépé can remain inside the Casbah and survive while losing the woman who has awakened his longing for another life.
Or he can leave the only place where he is safe.
Charles Boyer gives Pépé sophistication, danger and aching melancholy.
And opposite him is a newcomer to American movies whose entrance is almost impossible to forget.
Hedy Lamarr.
As Gaby, Lamarr doesn't need to chase the camera.
The camera seems fascinated by her.
Algiers became the film that introduced American audiences to one of Hollywood's most extraordinary women — an actress celebrated as one of the great screen beauties of her generation who possessed a remarkable mind the movies never fully revealed.
Behind Gaby's glamorous face was a woman who would eventually help devise technology far ahead of its time.
But in 1938, America was meeting Hedy Lamarr.
And Hollywood would never quite look the same again.
AIN BACKSTAGE SECRETS & AINTOIDS
FROM NOVEL TO FRENCH CLASSIC TO HOLLYWOOD
The story of Algiers didn't begin in Hollywood.
Henri La Barthe wrote the novel Pépé le Moko, which became the basis for Julien Duvivier's acclaimed 1937 French film Pépé le Moko starring Jean Gabin.
Hollywood producer Walter Wanger recognized the story's potential for American audiences.
Algiers became an American adaptation of that material, retaining the exotic Casbah setting and the doomed romance at the center of the story.
HEDY LAMARR ARRIVES IN HOLLYWOOD
For American movie audiences, Algiers introduced a remarkable new face.
Hedy Lamarr.
Born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler in Vienna, she had already appeared in European films before coming to Hollywood.
Producer Louis B. Mayer signed her to MGM and gave her the new screen name Hedy Lamarr.
Although MGM had signed her, producer Walter Wanger obtained her services for Algiers.
The film became Lamarr's American motion-picture debut.
THE CAMERA LOVED HEDY
Lamarr's entrance into American cinema became famous for a reason.
Hollywood cinematographers quickly discovered that her face photographed extraordinarily well.
Her dark hair, striking features and glamorous screen presence helped establish a visual style that other women would imitate.
She was soon promoted as one of the most beautiful women in the world.
But that description told only half of Hedy Lamarr's story.
THE BEAUTY WAS ALSO AN INVENTOR
Here is the Hedy Lamarr story Hollywood audiences of 1938 could never have imagined.
Lamarr was an inventor.
During World War II, she worked with composer George Antheil on a communication system intended to prevent radio-controlled torpedoes from being jammed by enemy forces.
Their idea involved rapidly switching radio frequencies according to a coordinated pattern.
They received a U.S. patent for their frequency-hopping communication system in 1942.
The concept became an important landmark in the history of wireless communications.
HEDY LAMARR AND GEORGE ANTHEIL
Lamarr didn't develop the invention alone.
Her collaborator was George Antheil, an avant-garde composer whose knowledge of mechanically synchronized player pianos helped inspire their approach to coordinating changing frequencies.
It was an extraordinary partnership.
A Hollywood movie star.
An experimental composer.
And an invention designed to help defeat enemy interference during wartime.
If somebody wrote it as a movie, it might sound too improbable.
It happened.
HOLLYWOOD SAW THE FACE — NOT THE ENGINEER
Lamarr later expressed frustration that people were fascinated by her appearance while paying far less attention to her intellectual abilities.
Hollywood had found an extraordinary screen beauty.
What it largely failed to recognize was an inventive mind.
Decades later, appreciation for Lamarr's technological work grew enormously.
Today her legacy encompasses both worlds.
Movie history.
And invention.
CHARLES BOYER AS PÉPÉ LE MOKO
Charles Boyer was already an established international actor by the time he played Pépé.
Born in France, Boyer possessed exactly the qualities the role required: sophistication, danger, romanticism and melancholy.
His Pépé isn't merely a criminal hiding from police.
He's a man trapped by his own survival.
The Casbah keeps him alive while preventing him from truly living.
“COME WITH ME TO THE CASBAH”
One of the most famous lines associated with Charles Boyer is some variation of:
“Come with me to the Casbah.”
There's only one problem.
Boyer doesn't actually say that famous line in Algiers.
The phrase grew through popular culture, impressions and parodies until it became permanently associated with Boyer's romantic screen persona.
It is one of Hollywood's wonderful examples of a movie quotation everybody seems to remember — even though it isn't actually in the movie.
PÉPÉ LE MOKO INSPIRED ANOTHER FAMOUS CHARACTER
If Charles Boyer's romantic French accent sounds strangely familiar to cartoon fans, there is a reason.
Boyer's screen persona — particularly the romantic image associated with Pépé le Moko — became one of the inspirations behind Warner Bros.' amorous French cartoon skunk Pepé Le Pew.
The name itself makes the connection wonderfully obvious.
A moody romantic crime drama helped contribute to one of animation's most recognizable comic characters.
THE CASBAH IS A CHARACTER
The Casbah isn't simply a backdrop.
It functions almost like another character in the film.
Its maze of alleys, stairways, rooftops and hidden rooms protects Pépé.
Police cannot easily penetrate it.
Information travels through its population.
Everyone seems to know everyone else.
But what begins as Pépé's fortress gradually becomes his prison.
The same streets that keep the police out keep Pépé in.
HOLLYWOOD'S ALGIERS WAS HOLLYWOOD
Despite the film's convincing atmosphere, Algiers was a Hollywood production.
The exotic world of the Casbah was recreated for American cameras rather than photographed as a conventional location production in Algeria.
Production design, cinematography, extras and carefully constructed atmosphere created the illusion.
Classic Hollywood was extraordinarily good at building worlds without leaving California.
THE SHADOWS POINT TOWARD FILM NOIR
Algiers predates the period generally identified as classic American film noir.
But look at what is already here.
A criminal protagonist.
A claustrophobic urban environment.
Romantic obsession.
Police surveillance.
Fatalism.
Shadows.
A man whose own desires lead him toward destruction.
The ingredients that would flourish in 1940s noir are already simmering.
JOSEPH CALLEIA AS INSPECTOR SLIMANE
Joseph Calleia's Inspector Slimane understands that capturing Pépé requires psychology rather than brute force.
Instead of simply storming the Casbah, Slimane studies his target.
He waits.
He understands Pépé's emotional vulnerabilities.
That patience makes him more dangerous than an army of policemen.
Slimane doesn't need to drag Pépé from his sanctuary.
He needs to make Pépé choose to leave it.
INES KNOWS THE DANGER
Sigrid Gurie's Ines understands Pépé's attraction to Gaby immediately.
Her jealousy isn't merely romantic possessiveness.
She knows what Gaby represents.
If Pépé loves Gaby enough to leave the Casbah, he may be walking directly into the hands of the police.
Love and survival become inseparable.
THREE ACADEMY AWARD NOMINATIONS
Algiers received three Academy Award nominations.
The film was recognized for its art direction, cinematography and Joseph Calleia's supporting performance.
The nominations reflect exactly what remains so striking about the movie: its atmospheric visual world and the strength of the performers inhabiting it.
CINEMATOGRAPHY BUILDS THE TRAP
James Wong Howe was one of the cinematographers associated with Algiers.
Howe would become one of the most celebrated cinematographers in Hollywood history, renowned for his command of shadow, composition and expressive lighting.
The Casbah needed to feel simultaneously romantic and dangerous.
Beautiful enough to seduce us.
Claustrophobic enough to trap Pépé.
The photography helps accomplish both.
AINTOID: HEDY CHANGED HER NAME BEFORE AMERICA MET HER
Hedy Lamarr arrived in Hollywood as Hedwig Kiesler.
Louis B. Mayer wanted a glamorous new identity for his European discovery.
She became Hedy Lamarr, with the surname reportedly chosen in connection with silent-film star Barbara La Marr.
The new name arrived with a new Hollywood career.
And Algiers introduced that name to American movie audiences.
AINTOID: HEDY'S INVENTION WAS PATENTED DURING WORLD WAR II
Lamarr and Antheil filed for their frequency-hopping invention during World War II and received U.S. Patent No. 2,292,387 in 1942.
Their goal was serious:
Create a communication method that could make radio-controlled torpedoes more difficult for an enemy to detect or jam.
The glamorous Hollywood actress was spending part of her time thinking about military communications technology.
AINTOID: RECOGNITION CAME DECADES LATER
Lamarr and Antheil did not become technological celebrities during the war.
Recognition of their pioneering work came much later.
In 1997, Lamarr and Antheil were honored with the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Pioneer Award.
Lamarr was finally receiving public recognition not simply for how she looked on a movie screen, but for what she had imagined decades earlier.
AINTOID: HEDY LAMARR — MOVIE STAR AND INVENTOR
That makes watching Algiers today a very different experience from watching it in 1938.
The original audience saw a beautiful new European actress making her American debut.
We know what came afterward.
Samson and Delilah.
Decades of Hollywood history.
And a technological legacy that would eventually make Hedy Lamarr an important name far beyond motion pictures.
Hollywood introduced her as a face.
History remembered her brain too.
DATE RELEASED
August 5, 1938
COUNTRY RELEASED
United States