Esclavas del amor

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.

Simone Signoret was Allégret 's wife at the time and of course his favourite actress.They teamed up for the third time but it was the first movie that really counted."Dédée d'Anvers" is not a masterpiece though.It's too close to the realisme poetique which was thriving during the last years before the war ,the Carné school.Signoret is well cast as a whore who falls in love and wants to begin a brand new life .Her vulgarity works wonders and she gets good support from Jane Marken and Bernard Blier.But the harbour subject and the ships which go sailing away where there are places in the sun had grown stale and hackneyed:see "quai des brumes" (1937) and even "les portes de la nuit" (1946)."Dédée d'Anvers" is a film noir ,the highlight of which is a murder in the wee small hours in the harbour.

Jacques Sigurd,Allégret's script writer , provided the director with solid material which would become better and better along the years.Their three best works were arguably "une si jolie petite plage" (1949) "manèges"(1950) which reunited the threesome Signoret-Blier-Marken for what was probably Allégret's peak and "les orgueilleux".(1953).After that movie,it was downhill.

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At the time, the logic goes, poetic realism was no longer a thing, it was outdated, passé, old-fashioned.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.

The story is pretty simple: there is a bar in the grimy, foggy port of Antwerp, owned by M. Rene (Bernard Blier). A hooker named Dedee (Signoret) and her pimp Marco (Dalio) work there, she as a dancer and he as the doorman. An Italian ship's captain (Pagliero) enters Dedee's life one night, and she begins to shape plans for getting out of "the life." Marco can't bear the idea of losing face with his associates--a pimp has to protect his turf--so he goes after Francesco with a gun...

There is an ease of storytelling and work with actors that shouldn't blind us to the reality that Allegret is working in a genre--poetic realism--that is worn out in the late Forties. Jacques Sigurd wrote seven scripts for Allegret, but he was never the equal of Jacques Prevert, either in creating memorable characters or great lines. The port setting and cast of desperate dreamers had been used before in Carne's Quai des brumes, with the exception of the shady life of Signoret's character, quite a change from Michele Morgan's purity.

The actors are all fine. Jane Marken and Dalio bring out the emotions of their characters--lively, not too smart, trusting and suspicious by turns. Marcel Pagliero is sturdy, quiet and trustworthy; he's at ease in front of the camera, the way Sergio Castellitto is today (he even looks a lot like Castellitto). Bernard Blier is sometimes sympathetic, sometimes contemptuous with his employees--it should be noted that Marco is a handful for even the strongest boss. This was Signoret's fifteenth film, and it finally launched her career. Her Dedee is beautiful, in that sculptural way she had, lively, smart and moving. She provides a good account of the making of the film in her autobiography, Nostalgia Isn't What It Used to Be.

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.