The best Pierre Blanchar’s crime movies

Vicky de Berlin, a female gangster, haunted by wartime memories , runs a floating night-club in Brussel. Marcel, her partner and lover, is in charge of the banknotes forgery manufacture concealed in the bottom of the boat. He decides to rob the Bank of Belgium and exchange a huge sum of counterfeit money for its equivalent in genuine one. But things get complicated when Yoko, the she leader of another gang and her lover The Bug interfere...

Outwardly, Monsieur Victor would appear to be the model citizen. A respectable Toulon shopkeeper, he has a devoted wife and is courteous and considerate to all who know him. However, beneath this veneer of respectability hides a notorious receiver of stolen goods, who trades with hardened criminals. Victor manages to keep up his double life without any difficulty until the fateful day when one of his partners in crime threatens to expose him. Fearing a scandal, Victor kills the crook in a moment of panic, using a shoemaker's tool. Naturally, the murder is blamed on a local shoemaker, who is sentenced to ten years' hard labour. Seven years later, the former shoemaker reappears in Toulon, having escaped from prison. The first person to recognise him is Monsieur Victor...

Pierre Chenal's adaptation of Dostoyevsky's novel, starring Pierre Blanchar and Harry Baur. Bears the influence of German Expressionism and serves as an early forerunner of poetic realism.