Die Schenke zum Vollmond

Wonderfully atmospheric and fatalistic drama. Set in the port of Antwerp (Anvers), this film creates a strong sense of place and, now, of time long gone by. Characters are vividly drawn and well played by a talented cast. Young Simone Signoret is easily seen as a big star of the near future. In support are Bernard Blier and Marcel Dalio. Director Yves Allégret moves things along beautifully, telling a story of down-and-out, often desperate people living in a foggy, dead-end place.

One scene does seems strange: a character is shown rushing down stairs, but only hands on the railing are seen, and in the following shots we see only hands and hear the voice, but never directly see the actor. In the next scene, the actor is again visible as before. Perhaps some production problem forced them to film the sequence this way. In any case, a forgotten gem of 1940s French cinema.

Some people make a big issue about this movie having been released in 1948. Apparently this was too late, it should have been 1938... as if that made any difference in this century.

At the time, the logic goes, poetic realism was no longer a thing, it was outdated, passé, old-fashioned. Well I contend that a good movie remains a good movie, in or out of fashion. Even if it was released yesterday, so even more so if it's as old as your granny.

For a start, as everyone acknowledges,, there's Simone Signoret. Not only (very) beautiful, but a powerful, tragic figure that fills the screen. As soon as you see her, you know you can expect... OK no spoilers.

Then there's a strong, memorable story. This is an important ingredient in poetic realism, as it gives weight to the atmospheric sets. That is part of why Le Jour se Lève or Liliom are so good. Dédée d'Anvers is in that class. People have compared it unfavourably with Quai des Brumes. Well I find that, for all its spender, that movie has a somewhat meandering, confused story that makes you wonder what all the atmosphere is about.

This film made Simone Signoret an important actress, and it is a deeply depressing film set in Antwerp mainly in a bar where prostitutes are available. Signoret is one of them, and the film concentrates on her life there and her love for an Italian captain of a ship that is in the harbour. Her pimp does not like this and this is when things turn nasty. The ending is especially so and the film ends on a bleak note. Some place it in the genre of French Poetic Realism which usually means murky sets, sullen faces and criminality. Usually these films involved Jean Gabin and personally I find them drab and intensely tedious. This genre fortunately faded out with the arrival of the Nouvelle Vague, another nebulous French definition for a disparate set of directors. But to return to this film. Yves Allegret was Signoret's husband at the time, and with this film and the appallingly depressing ' Maneges ' made her a very successful actor. I find his direction in both films to be dour, solid and worst of all boring. Both films seemed to set a pattern in Signoret's career. Despite her beauty I find her a passive actor, open to despair which sourly contorted her features. Only in ' Casque D'Or ' ( Golden Marie ) directed by Jacques Becker does she consistently glow, but again the ending has to be fatalistic and down beat. This repetition of fateful endings continued with ' The Witches of Salem ', ' Therese Raquin ' and ' Room at the Top ' made in the UK. Happiness on film was always brief for her and to repeat the word passive she follows the repetition as if it is a cinematic necessity. I find this sad and all of the above films should be avoided by the depressed. To lighten this darkness I must mention how superb she was in Ophuls ' La Ronde ' beginning and ending it with wit and brave cynicism. I believe others when they say she was a great actor, and no doubt she was but I have rarely responded to her. Only in a much later film ' Ship of Fools ' did I get a glimpse of her magic, but there again she was destined for cinematic defeat. I have forgotten ' The Fiends ' made by Clouzot and for me it is the apotheosis of her tendency to gravitate towards fatality. In ' Dedee d'Anvers ' she is beginning the route, and I have avoided it for years. Taking the plunge I surfaced longing to return to Jacques Demy and Eric Rohmer and their bitter sweet tales. As a woman Signoret held high principles and I respect her enormously, who in life I am sure never accepted defeat. I just wish she had taken a less dark path on film.

Luckily for them and for us this first collaboration firmly established husband and wife team Yves Allégret and Simone Signoret.

The influence of that masterpiece of poetic-realism 'Quai des Brumes' is there for all to see although the dialogue of Jacques Sigurd ensures there is far less poetry than realism. Despite oodles of atmosphere courtesy of lighting cameraman Jean Bourgoin and a talented cast this does rather pale in comparison with the earlier film.

Superlative Bernard Blier(father of Bertrand) is both tough and tender as nightclub owner Monsieur René whilst Marcel Dalio relishes his role as Dédée's crapulous pimp. Jane Marken does a nice turn as a tart with a heart. Marcello Pagliero is suitably laconic as Francesco, the ill-fated hero but his character is under-written and he is no Jean Gabin! The scenes between Blier and Signoret are excellent and Allégret was to pair them again to great effect two years later in 'Maneges'.

In the title role La Signoret not only has star quality in spades but exhibits an unbeatable combination of sensuality and vulnerability. Suffice to say husband Allégret ensures that she is lovingly lit and almost caressed by the camera.

For any film to have the desired effect it is essential to have at least a good opening and ending. The opening scene here is nothing less than iconic whilst the ending is nothing short of devastating and still guaranteed to shock.

This was a contender for the Venice Film Festival's Golden Lion – facing such stiff competitors as THE FALLEN IDOL, David Lean's OLIVER TWIST, THE RED SHOES, THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE and the eventual winner, Laurence Olivier's HAMLET. Incidentally, leading lady Simone Signoret and director Allegret were husband and wife at the time of shooting, but they divorced the following year.

On the surface, the film does feel suspiciously like an inferior rehash of Marcel Carne's PORT OF SHADOWS (1938) – not just its harbor setting and noir-ish ambiance, but the characterizations themselves: with Signoret neatly replacing Michele Morgan, Italian writer-turned-director-and-actor Marcello Pagliero (he starred in Roberto Rossellini's ROME, OPEN CITY [1945] and later directed the similarly-titled ROMA, CITTA' LIBERA [1946]) instead of Jean Gabin, Bernard Blier standing in for Michel Simon, and Marcel Dalio essaying the role of the cowardly crook portrayed by Pierre Brasseur in the earlier film! Even so, the four leads are all excellent in their respective roles: Signoret, especially, has a star-making turn as the optimistic bar hostess/streetwalker and Dalio is deliciously slimy as her wimpish pimp who is not above beating her to get the girl to extort more money from her clients, which he then squanders on his infallibly doomed schemes.

The film is very well done in all departments (an unexpected highlight is a brutal street scuffle early on, not to mention the vicious ending) and makes one look forward to eventually sampling Allegret's other well-regarded efforts – UNE SI JOLIE PETITE PLAGE (1949), MANEGES (1950; also with Signoret and Blier, which I have on VHS but only in French) and THE PROUD AND THE BEAUTIFUL (1953). Ultimately, DEDEE D' ANVERS has the disadvantage of being sort of stuck in the middle between two superior movies on a similar theme – the afore-mentioned PORT OF SHADOWS and Jacques Becker's CASQUE D'OR (1952; also starring Signoret).

While one has to be grateful to Italian TV channels for the loyalty they show towards French cinema in the way they keep pumping them out throughout their daily schedules, I have to complain about the dire state of the print quality on evidence here: the video is hazy in the extreme and is saddled besides with a tagged-on, anachronistically modernistic soundtrack!