PORT OF SHADOWS

Deserter Jean (Jean Gabin) arrives starving at the port of Le Havre where he is helped by two other desperate men, a tramp and a failure of a painter. In a harbour tavern he meets the young Nelly (Michèle Morgan) who has run away from her guardian, the receveur of stolen goods Zabel (Michel Simon), and who is being pursued by the thug Lucien (Pierre Brasseur). The love affair between Jean and Nelly is a one-night stand, after which Jean is murdered in the street by Lucien just after saving Nelly from Zabel’s clutches, as he is about to board a ship bound for far-off South America.
Adapted from Pierre MacOrlan’s novel Quai des brumes, albeit set in Montmartre, this film is the pinnacle of what is known as ‘poetic realism’, marked by the collaboration between Carné and Prévert, ably supported by Trauner’s sets, Jaubert’s music and the performances of Gabin, Simon and Morgan. The importance of destiny, the proletarian setting, the tragic sense of defeat, fatal love as the only source of hope, the dream of an inaccessible distant land: these are the main themes of a true masterpiece, capable like few others of translating the deep anxiety for the impending war of that time.