La vergine del Reno

Jean Gabin wangles a place on a barge headed for Strassburg. He's in a hurry to get there. It's soon revealed that he's out for revenge. He's spent more than a dozen years in POW camps and hospitals, betrayed by his "widow", Elina Labourdette, who married her lover, Renaud Mary. They've spent almost a decade and a half sacking the company Gabin had built, so he buys a gun....

There are a few loose threads hanging in this movie, apparently cut down from the novel it's based on; neither is it a great film. Still, it's got Gabin, some good location shooting in Strassburg, a nice puzzle, some pretty women to look at, and for a change, some police officers who aren't complete dopes. Director Gilles Grangier directed Gabin in a baker's dozen movies, none of them classics, but all of them solid programmers, and this is a good way to spend eighty minutes of your time if you're not looking for something deep. I figured out the puzzle about ten minutes before they gave the answer, which means it was fairly done.... especially as at the time it wasn't clear there was a puzzle to figure out.