"No one speaks of Julien Duvivier without apologising." ~ Dudley Andrew (film critic) 

The Imposter was the last Hollywood film for both director and star who fled to California during the occupation, French cinema legends Julien Duvivier and Jean Gabin, and landed after the liberation of Paris by the allies but before the end of WWII. Duvivier had made successful films for Fox (Tales of Manhattan) and Universal (Flesh and Fantasy) and addressed the touchy topic of the war as a displaced Frenchman, toughing it out in Hollywood luxury while his countrymen suffered under the Nazi jackboot. The film was released in a crowded market of war films, mostly American gung-ho, patriotic tosh with John Wayne or Errol Flynn routinely winning battles single handedly, so a nuanced story of Free French fighters not doing much fighting in colonial Africa was always going to struggle to find an audience. It’s a pity, because the names of the director and star should have been enough to know it would be a quality production.

Clement (Jean Gabin), a convicted murderer, is being led to his execution in a prison in France. German bombs fall and he escapes and jumps in a troop transport vehicle with several soldiers, but they are strafed by an enemy plane and most are killed. Clement survives but steals the identity of one of the dead soldiers and jumps a ship bound for Africa as LeFarge. He falls in with a disparate bunch of French soldiers, led by officer Lieutenant Vareene (Richard Whorf) who suspects LeFarge is not all he seems, and stays with them as they join the resistance in French Equatorial Africa.

Not surprisingly, given Duvivier’s status, the film is about the love of France from a displaced and distanced national, and it’s also about identity and redemption. Gabin’s character finds the camaraderie of his fellow soldiers gives him a renewed purpose as it opens his embittered heart and offers him a path away from his dismal past. Duvivier draws notable characters and makes the best of some fine character actors, the stand out being John Qualen as the Normandy farmer who first learns the truth about LeFarge’s true identity.

Gabin is fine as the title character, even given he’s speaking English, but his quintessential French-ness probably mitigated against being accepted widely in the role. The Imposter has (inevitably) something of the allure of a Casablanca, but not the light touch or wit, given Duvivier’s penchant for investigating the darker side of human affairs. Duvivier was perfectly capable of lightness and even comedy, but when he wanted darkness he was not inclined to leaven its impact an so it is here. We feel the sweat, frustrations and claustrophobia of men doing dirty work in a jungle without fanfare or thanks – part of a global struggle against the forces of fascism.

Gabin had only made one other Hollywood film, the underrated and troubled Moontide in 1941, and that failed to initiate a career in American films but did coincide with a year’s long affair with Marlene Dietrich. After The Imposter wrapped, Gabin left Hollywood to join the Free French forces under Charles De Gaulle, served in a tank regiment in North Africa and was actually present at the liberation of Paris. Duvivier returned to France after the war and made one of his darkest dramas, the peerless Panique, a withering examination of bigotry and betrayal – heartfelt as Duvivier was himself isolated and condemned by parts of the French public that viewed his Hollywood sojourn as a betrayal. Ironically those directors that did stay and work under Nazi control, like Henri-Georges Clouzot, found themselves accused of collaboration for producing films if they were somehow critical of French people.  

The Imposter benefits hugely from some beautifully underplayed supporting performances from Richard Whorf, Allyn Joslyn, Peter Van Eyck and John Ford favourite John Qualen. Joslyn is effortlessly natural (as he was in Hawk’s flyer classic Only Angels Have Wings) and a very young Van Eyck makes a strong impression, but Qualen steals the show with his innate humanity and creates a credible foil for Gabin’s troubled character. The masculine ensemble is only briefly interrupted by the lovely Ellen Drew who makes a mark as the dead man’s fiancé.

Duvivier displayed his mastery of both epic scenes of bombing and destruction and the quieter, more intimate and intense moments, capturing the key shots with the aid of French born American cinematographer Paul ‘Ivano’ Ivanichévitch. Ivano had shot Duvivier’s anthology film Flesh and Fantasy and had recently proved his mettle by surviving as a cameraman on Von Sternberg’s The Shanghai Gesture – a couple of his other notable films were Queen Kelly for Erich Von Stroheim, The Four Horsemen of The Apocalypse for Rex Ingram and They Live By Night for Nicholas Ray (with its groundbreaking helicopter opening shot). The tone Duvivier conjured here predated but shared more in common with John Ford’s superb but downbeat 1945 classic They Were Expendable, than any of the ‘guts and glory’ type propaganda efforts that most studios were churning out in 1943.

It's a shame such a solid film failed to find an audience, but Hollywood was just as tough a fit for Gabin as it was for his great friend and collaborator Jean Renoir. Julien Duvivier fared somewhat better having had solid hits with his last 3 films, which included Lydia, with Merle Oberon, a remake of his marvelous 1937 French film, Un Carnet de Bal. Duvivier and Gabin would reunite a decade later for the excellent Voici Le Temps Des Assassins, another deceptively bitter examination of the dark side of human endeavor. Despite falling afoul of the culture police in the 1950s, in the form of the young bucks of Cahier du Cinéma, Duvivier continued to run his own race until a car crash took him out in the Summer of Love at the age of 71.
C'est ironique, n'est-ce pas ?