Gas-oil

1955, France, directed by Gilles Grangier

A fine Gabin/Gilles Grangier collaboration, with some dialogue from the pen of Michel Audiard (Gabin gets a few pearls, very nicely delivered). Gabin is a truck driver -- as in the following year's much bleaker Des gens sans importance -- who inadvertently comes to the attention of some gangland figures, with Jeanne Moreau as his love interest. Gabin's role hearkens back to some of his most iconic working-man parts and it's not hard to see his character as an evolution of that of La Belle équipe, while the overall picture of the trucker's life is filled with enjoyable vignettes of working class/small town life in central France.