In La Traversée de Paris (1956), Jean Gabin played Grandgil, a wealthy painter who, during the German occupation of Paris, agrees to help a humble taxi driver, played by Bourvil, smuggle a pig across the city through the blackout. Directed by Claude Autant-Lara, the film is a comedy of the Occupation, dark, funny and deeply human.
Grandgil is elegant, cynical and secretly generous, and Gabin plays him with a lightness that contrasts beautifully with Bourvil’s bewildered everyman. The film’s journey across Paris becomes a portrait of a city under occupation, in which courage and cowardice, greed and kindness, walk side by side. It remains one of Gabin’s most beloved post-war roles.