Port of Shadows

Port of Shadows French Le Quai des brumes is a 1938 French film directed by Marcel Carn. It stars Jean Gabin, Michel Simon and Michle Morgan. The screenplay was written by Jacques Prvert based on a novel by Pierre Mac Orlan. The music score was by Maurice Jaubert. It is a notable example of the poetic realism genre. The film was the 1939 winner of Frances top cinematic prize, the Prix LouisDelluc.

On a foggy night, Jean Jean Gabin, an army deserter, catches a ride to the port city of Le Havre. Hoping to start over, Jean finds himself in a lonely bar at the far edge of town. But, while getting a good meal and civilian clothes, Jean meets Nelly Michle Morgan, a 17yearold 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 Lucien, a gangster who is looking for Nellys exboyfriend, Maurice, who has recently gone missing. 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. While the two are in love, Jean plans to leave on a ship for Venezuela. 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.The film is in the style that Carn was most associated with, poetic realism. Luc Sante writes that Port of Shadows possesses nearly all the qualities that were once synonymous with the idea of French cinema. Gabineating sausage with a knife or talking around a cigarette butt parked in the corner of his mouth or administering a backhanded slap to Brasseurs kisseris the quintessential French tough guy, as iconic a figure as Bogart playing Sam Spade. Michle 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 cant 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 passionsuch things defined a national cinema that might have be

Source: Wikipedia