''Port of Shadows'' (french: Le Quai des brumes , "The dock of mists") is a 1938 French film directed by Marcel Carné. An example of
poetic realism
Poetic realism was a film movement in France of the 1930s. More a tendency than a movement, poetic realism is not strongly unified like Soviet montage or French Impressionism but were individuals who created this lyrical style. Its leading filmm ...
, it stars
Jean Gabin
Jean Gabin (; 17 May 190415 November 1976) was a French actor and singer. Considered a key figure in French cinema, he starred in several classic films including ''Pépé le Moko'' (1937), '' La grande illusion'' (1937), ''Le Quai des brumes'' ...
,
Michel Simon
Michel Simon (; 9 April 1895 – 30 May 1975) was a Swiss-French actor. He appeared in many notable French films, including ''La Chienne'' (1931), ''Boudu Saved from Drowning'' (1932), ''L'Atalante'' (1934), ''Port of Shadows'' (1938), '' The He ...
and
Michèle Morgan
Michèle Morgan (; née Simone Renée Roussel; 29 February 1920 – 20 December 2016) was a French film actress, who was a leading lady for three decades in both French cinema and Hollywood features. She is considered to have been one of the g ...
. The screenplay was written by
Jacques Prévert
Jacques Prévert (; 4 February 1900 – 11 April 1977) was a French poet and screenwriter. His poems became and remain popular in the French-speaking world, particularly in schools. His best-regarded films formed part of the poetic realist moveme ...
based on a novel by
Pierre Mac Orlan
Pierre Mac Orlan, sometimes written MacOrlan (born Pierre Dumarchey, February 26, 1882 – June 27, 1970), was a French novelist and songwriter.
His novel '' Quai des Brumes'' was the source for Marcel Carné's 1938 film of the same name, starring ...
. The music score was by
Maurice Jaubert
Maurice Jaubert (3 January 1900 – 19 June 1940) was a French composer.Prix Louis-Delluc.
According to Charles O'Brien, the film would be one of the first to be called " film noir" by critics (1939, France).
Plot
On a foggy night, Jean (Jean Gabin), an army deserter, catches a ride to the port city of
Le Havre
Le Havre (, ; nrf, Lé Hâvre ) is a port city in the Seine-Maritime department in the Normandy region of northern France. It is situated on the right bank of the estuary of the river Seine on the Channel southwest of the Pays de Caux, very ...
. Hoping to start over, Jean finds himself in a lonely bar at the far edge of town. However, while getting a good meal and civilian clothes, Jean meets Nelly (Michèle Morgan), a 17-year-old who has run away from her godfather, Zabel, with whom she lives. Jean and Nelly spend time together over the following days, but they are often interrupted by Zabel, who is also in love with her, and by Lucien, a gangster who is looking for Nelly's ex-boyfriend, Maurice, who has recently gone missing. Jean resents the intrusions of Lucien and twice humiliates him by slapping him. When Nelly finds out that her godfather killed Maurice out of jealousy, she uses the information to blackmail him and prevent him from telling the police that Jean is a deserter. Though the two are in love, Jean plans to leave on a ship for
Venezuela
Venezuela (; ), officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela ( es, link=no, República Bolivariana de Venezuela), is a country on the northern coast of South America, consisting of a continental landmass and many islands and islets in th ...
. At the last minute Jean leaves the ship to say goodbye to Nelly; he saves her from the hands of Zabel, whom he kills, but when they go out on to the street he is shot in the back by Lucien and dies in her arms.
Cast
*
Jean Gabin
Jean Gabin (; 17 May 190415 November 1976) was a French actor and singer. Considered a key figure in French cinema, he starred in several classic films including ''Pépé le Moko'' (1937), '' La grande illusion'' (1937), ''Le Quai des brumes'' ...
as Jean
*
Michel Simon
Michel Simon (; 9 April 1895 – 30 May 1975) was a Swiss-French actor. He appeared in many notable French films, including ''La Chienne'' (1931), ''Boudu Saved from Drowning'' (1932), ''L'Atalante'' (1934), ''Port of Shadows'' (1938), '' The He ...
as Zabel
*
Michèle Morgan
Michèle Morgan (; née Simone Renée Roussel; 29 February 1920 – 20 December 2016) was a French film actress, who was a leading lady for three decades in both French cinema and Hollywood features. She is considered to have been one of the g ...
as Nelly
*
Pierre Brasseur
Pierre Brasseur (22 December 1905 – 16 August 1972), born Pierre-Albert Espinasse, was a French actor.
Biography
The son of actors Georges Espinasse and Germaine Brasseur, the latter a cousin of Albert Brasseur; his grandfather, Jules B ...
as Lucien
*
Édouard Delmont
Édouard Delmont (5 December 1883 – 22 November 1955) was a French actor born Édouard Marius Autran in Marseille. He died in Cannes at age 72.
Filmography
*1930 : '' L'Arlésienne'' de Jacques de Baroncelli
*1930 : ''Maison de danses'' de ...
Robert Le Vigan
Robert Le Vigan (born Robert Coquillaud, January 7, 1900 – October 12, 1972), was a French actor.
He appeared in more than 60 films between 1931 and 1943 almost exclusively in small or supporting roles. He was, according to film academic ...
as Le peintre
*
René Génin
René Génin (25 January 1890 – 24 October 1967) was a French stage and film actor. He appeared in more than 130 films between 1931 and 1965.
Selected filmography
* ''The Brighton Twins'' (1936)
* ''27 Rue de la Paix'' (1936)
* '' Nights ...
as Le docteur
*
Marcel Pérès
Marcel Pérès (born 15 July 1956, Oran, Algeria) is a French musicologist, composer, choral director and singer, and the founder of the early music group Ensemble Organum. He is an authority on Gregorian and pre-Gregorian chant.
Pérès w ...
as Le chauffeur
*
Léo Malet
Léo Malet (7 March 1909 – 3 March 1996) was a French crime novelist and surrealist.
Biography
Leo Malet was born in Montpellier. He had little formal education and began work as a cabaret singer at "La Vache Enragee" in Montmartre, Paris in 1 ...
The film is in the style that Carné was most associated with,
poetic realism
Poetic realism was a film movement in France of the 1930s. More a tendency than a movement, poetic realism is not strongly unified like Soviet montage or French Impressionism but were individuals who created this lyrical style. Its leading filmm ...
. Lucy Sante writes that "''Port of Shadows'' possesses nearly all the qualities that were once synonymous with the idea of French cinema. Gabin—eating sausage with a knife or talking around a cigarette butt parked in the corner of his mouth or administering a backhanded slapping him on his cheek —is the quintessential French tough guy, as iconic a figure as Bogart playing Sam Spade. Michèle Morgan, ethereal and preoccupied, may pale a bit in comparison to some of her sisters in Parisian movies of the time (Arletty, for example), but she comes to life in bed, in a scene you can’t imagine occurring in an American movie before 1963 or so. The hazy lights, the wet cobblestones, the prehensile poplars lining the road out of town, the philosophical gravity of peripheral characters, the idea that nothing in life is more important than passion—such things defined a national cinema that might have been dwarfed by Hollywood in terms of reach and profit but stood every inch as tall as regards grace and beauty and power."
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
'' wrote that the film is "one of the most engrossing and provocative films of the season"; according to him, "it's a thorough-going study in blacks and grays, without a free laugh in it; but it is also a remarkably beautiful motion picture from the purely pictorial standpoint and a strangely haunting drama. As a steady diet, of course, it would give us the
willies
Willies may refer to:
* Willies, Nord, a commune in the Nord department in northern France
* ''The Willies'', a 2002 album by Bill Frisell
* ''The Willies'' (film), a 1990 American comedy/horror anthology
* Willies Ice Cream, a company in Trinida ...
; for a change it's as tonic as a raw winter's day." At the time of its release, the film was widely criticized for being too negative about the State and moral character of the French.
Over sixty years after its premiere, Lucy Sante, writing about the film for its DVD release by Criterion Collection, called the film a "definitive example of the style known as '
poetic realism
Poetic realism was a film movement in France of the 1930s. More a tendency than a movement, poetic realism is not strongly unified like Soviet montage or French Impressionism but were individuals who created this lyrical style. Its leading filmm ...
'. The ragged outlines, the lowdown settings, the romantic fatalism of the protagonists, the movement of the story first upward toward a single moment of happiness and then down to inexorable doom—the hallmarks of the style had germinated in some form or other through the decade, but in Marcel Carné's third feature they came together as archetypes."
Danish director Carl Dreyer included ''Port of Shadows'' in his top ten film list.
A scene from the film is seen projected in the 2007
Academy Award
The Academy Awards, better known as the Oscars, are awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international film industry. The awards are regarded by many as the most prestigious, significant awards in the entertainment ind ...
-winning dramatization of
Ian McEwan
Ian Russell McEwan, (born 21 June 1948) is an English novelist and screenwriter. In 2008, ''The Times'' featured him on its list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945" and ''The Daily Telegraph'' ranked him number 19 in its list of th ...
's wartime tragic drama ''
Atonement
Atonement (also atoning, to atone) is the concept of a person taking action to correct previous wrongdoing on their part, either through direct action to undo the consequences of that act, equivalent action to do good for others, or some other ...
''.
Home media
Prior to July 2004,Criterion Collection gave the film a "bare-bones" release, with a booklet and limited on-screen special features; according to James Steffen of
Turner Classic Movies
Turner Classic Movies (TCM) is an American movie-oriented pay-TV network owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. Launched in 1994, Turner Classic Movies is headquartered at Turner's Techwood broadcasting campus in the Midtown business district of At ...
, the DVD's "high-definition transfer does justice to Carné, Schufftan and Trauner's richly detailed vision", though there are issues because of the "highly variable" quality of the 35mm film used: "Within the same scene some shots can be startlingly clear, while others are very grainy and have much weaker contrast and detail. On the balance, it still looks extremely good for a film of this vintage." Steffen also noted the "mono sound is clear and without too much distortion. The characters use lots of colorful slang whose flavor is difficult to translate into English, but the subtitles do an admirable job."