Raimu (Victor) runs a successful shop in Toulon selling artefacts and knick-knacks. He is a popular member of the community and is somewhat of a scatty, bumbling character only he is funny with it unlike the British comedy characters of this era. A robbery has taken place in the town and has hit the headlines and 3 men turn up at Raimu's house. Guess what? These 3 men are the thieves and Raimu is the ring-leader! Well, no-one expected that. Cobbler Pierre Blanchar (Bastien) is in the wrong place at the wrong time and gets sentenced to 10 years in prison when one of the thieves - Georges Flamant (Amedee) - is killed. We know who the real killer is. Guess who? Flamant wants to see his son so hatches a plan to escape but who can he turn to for help in Toulon. Guess who?

I agree with the reviewer "kekseksa" who lays it out as it is. Raimu is not a good man - he is a criminal with a ruthless streak. There are 2 noted reviewers for French films - "dbdumonteil" and "writers_reign" - who I always read before purchasing any frog film, and they have got this one wrong in their assessments of Raimu's character, I'm afraid. He is bad and there is even tension in the film when he is shielding Blanchar as we think he might turn him in and claim the reward, or kill him so he permanently disappears. These are both likely situations that pass through the mind.

The cast are all good, especially the two female roles. Even the children do well and I usually can't stand children in films. One thing that I don't get is why anyone would want to escape 7 years into a 10-year sentence just to see their son. In this prison, they are even given cool hats to wear. The French are obviously a bit weird.

Raimu is many things. He's the loving husband of Madeleine Renaud and the father of their newborn son, he's a successful shop owner, he's well respected and connected throughout Toulon, he's a fence for a gang that have just robbed a castle and a church, and he's the murderer of one of the gang who tried to blackmail him. Not that anyone but the thieves know the last two, and the surviving thieves don't know the last. Everyone thinks that cobbler Pierre Blanchar is the murderer and he's sentenced to Devil's Island. And so seven years pass, and Blanchar escapes and returns hoping to see his son.

This movie has many nice touches, lots of performers who get a single name on the screen -- a mark, in France, of their renown, real or not -- some nice atmosphere, including a game of petanque, and a particularly good performance from Mlle Renaud. At its heart, though, it's a vehicle for Raimu, and he shows his enormous range in the first half hour, from clown to murderer. It is in the final hour of the movie that he comes to exemplify all the contradictions that make up human beings. There are not so many laughs in this part, even as Raimu makes up a tall tale to tell his wife. It's that sad clown mien that Raimu dons as he explains what's going on in his heart that I find so touching.

Grémillon belongs to the same generation of French film-makers as Duvivier or Renoir, all born in the late 1890s. One could add Becker, Carné and Clouzot, born in the late 1900s, to the list. Nowadays, Grémillon's legacy is somewhat overshadowed by that of his colleagues, even though it's revered by some movie-buffs like the late French director and ultimate cinéphile Bertrand Tavernier.

Grémillon's trademark style involves setting a melodrama in a very realistic background, depicting everyday's life in rather modest, and often coastal surroundings. There are a lot of exterior shots of natural and urban landscapes, in an almost documentary fashion, a focus on the material hardships of his heroes, whether in their professional or private lives. At their best, his works foretell the neorealist Italian movies of the 1940-50s.

"L'Etrange Monsieur Victor" is a melodrama with criminal and social undertones, set in Toulon, a military harbor city in the French Provence, A respectable-looking bourgeois, Victor Agardanne (Raimu) is in fact the head of a gang of jewel robbers. He murders one of his accomplices and lets an innocent, hard-working cobbler (Blanchar) get condemned and sent to jail in his place. The drama picks up once the wrongfully convicted cobbler escapes from jail and heads back home, with Mr. Victor torn between remorse and his continued need to hide his crimes from both justice and his virtuous wife (Renaud).

The story is rather implausible overall, a sort of "Crime and Punishment" where Raskolnikov would be innocent and Judge. Porfiry would be the actual murderer - interestingly, Blanchar had played. Raskolnikov three years before in a movie by Pierre Chenal.

The whole melodrama part, in particular, is very dated, with dialogues which do not particularly inspire, and a depiction of human relationships which is very theatrical. Neither does the "crime story" fully convince: the plot is quite predictable, and Victor's would-be moral dilemma is painted in too broad strokes to be believable, the man oscillating between Mediterranean geniality and hard-core ruthlessness.

There remains a cast which deliver excellent and sometimes highly enjoyable performances. Raimu is a delight to watch, and Renaud is very moving. The two however, make for a very ill--assorted couple, beyond the needs of the script: it feels sometimes that they are playing in two different movies. Blanchar is the weak link of the cast, with a grating fake Provençal accent and a stilted and exaggerated acting style straight out of the silent films area. Viviane Romance has a small part as his wife of loose morals, a role she will reprise in several other pictures.

To be watched for Raimu and the depiction of Toulon in the late 1930s, Grémillon-style. For a movie featuring the framing of an innocent man over a background of social strife, check Duvivier's masterpiece "Panique" (1946), which is hugely superior.