Port of Shadows (1938)

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Port of Shadows (1938) – M. Carné

Director Marcel Carné and writer Jacques Prévert are known for their films made during and just before WWII in a style known as “poetic realism”.  Along with Le Jour Se Lève (Daybreak, 1939), Le Quai Des Brumes (Port of Shadows) is typically seen as a part of a doom-laden zeitgeist that infected France before the Nazis invaded.  Les Visiteurs du Soir (The Devil’s Envoys, 1942) and Les Enfants Du Paradis (Children of Paradise, 1945, their masterpiece) were made during the Occupation.  And then the zeitgeist for poetic realism was over.  But Port of Shadows and Daybreak, both starring tough guy Jean Gabin, capture the mood, with their doomed love – or love between doomed people – depicted with poetic words and poetic images.  Here, Gabin plays a soldier (also Jean) who has deserted the army and we first see him coolly hitchhiking to Le Havre, a port city on the English Channel.  Seeking refuge, he follows a friendly drunk to an isolated shack where other loners congregate under the welcoming roof of “Panama” (Édouard Delmont).  There he meets Nelly (Michèle Morgan) who is hiding from her (possibly evil) guardian, Zabel (Michel Simon), and a trio of gangsters led by Lucien (Pierre Brasseur) who are also after Zabel (who has something to do with a missing man).  It is love at first sight for Jean and Nelly, but we know that Jean seeks to escape France on a ship bound for Venezuela.  Moreover, he has accepted civilian clothes from a painter who leaves them as he swims out to commit suicide, a bad omen if ever there were one.  When he defends Nelly by slapping Lucien (an embarrassment more than anything else), we see the gears of the plot start to grind inexorably toward Jean’s doom.  He knows it and Nelly knows it but still they love each other and still he gets on board the ship to depart.  But a temporary separation instilled with hope is not to be.  Such is the plot but it is really the dialogue (Prévert), the stylized soundstage production design (Alexandre Trauner), the gauzy foggy cinematography (Eugen Schüfftan), and the noir hero acting (Gabin) that seal the deal (all went on to great things).  The melancholy beauty of it all cannot help but bewitch you.