[1][2] Amongst his most original films, chiefly notable are La Bandera, Pépé le Moko, Little World of Don Camillo, Panic (Panique), Deadlier Than the Male and Marianne de ma jeunesse.

Having made Le Golem (1936), a remake of an earlier German horror film, Duvivier set out on La belle équipe (also 1936), with Jean Gabin, Charles Vanel and Raymond Aimos.

L'Homme du jour (1936), with Maurice Chevalier in the lead role is a minor work in the director's canon but Pépé le Moko and Un Carnet de Bal (both 1937) are incontestable summits.

Pépé le Moko, which plunges into the midst of the gangster underworld and which had the Casbah (Arab quarter) of Algiers for exotic backdrop, was the film which propelled Jean Gabin into the category of an international star.

In 1940 Untel père et fils, a family history starring Raimu, Michèle Morgan, and Louis Jouvet, was not able to be shown — because of the political situation — until the end of the war, at least in France.

Lydia (1941); two anthology films, Tales of Manhattan (1942) with Charles Boyer and Rita Hayworth among leading actors, and Flesh and Fantasy (1943) with Edward G. Robinson, Charles Boyer and Barbara Stanwyck; The Impostor (1944), again with Jean Gabin; and Destiny (also 1944), a Reginald Le Borg directed film which was built around a cut thirty-minute sequence from Flesh and Fantasy (Duvivier was uncredited) .

Duvivier continued, notwithstanding, to work in France until the end of his life, apart from a short period in Great Britain to shoot Anna Karenina (1948) and to Spain for Black Jack (1950).

In Deadlier Than the Male (1956), Jean Gabin plays a decent restaurateur in Les Halles who is swindled by a cynical young woman, Catherine, (Danièle Delorme).

It was an exercise in style; 11 people, nine men, two women, and a mise en scène that followed the unities of time, place, and action, it had a constant concern for the framing of the composition to reinforce an inquisitorial, menacing atmosphere.

Duvivier's final portmanteau film was Le Diable et les dix Commandements (1962), while the scenario of Chair de poule (1963) has a resemblance to The Postman Always Rings Twice and again features an unscrupulous woman.