Pasión fatal

I've just seen Port of Shadows for the first time in my life, and I must say I really liked it. I'm already a great admirer of old black & white pictures, and I enjoyed The Great Illusion as well. This one is rather different from Illusion, though from the same era and also with Jean Gabin as the quintessential Frenchman. It's hauntingly sad, quietly emotional, and even if it's a bit dated in some places (the pathetic hood played by Brasseur) it still manages to creep up on you and leaves you absorbed with the motifs of human loneliness and the not unreasonable, but ultimately impossible human dream of happiness. So it's not a laugh-riot, and you don't leave the cinema with a happy feeling, but you do feel good about having seen it. It's a masterpiece in French cinema history, Jean Gabin is ideal as the tough-as-butter soldier with a doomed soft spot for Michéle Morgan's beautiful waif, and in the end all you remember is the quiet mists of Le Havre harbor, and the sense of ill-fate and lost chances. Not to mention the beautiful eyes of a very young Morgan!

When I was young this is what I used to call a "bulger", the first time I saw it when 18 years old I was so impressed by the bulging murky atmosphere, and the over-riding sense of doom pervading the film I thought it couldn't be bettered. Then I read up on Warner Bros. techniques for their best "atmospheric" potboilers such as The Big Sleep and realised it was, as usual, all down to saving money. LQDB is nearly completely studio-bound, therefore the fogs, darkness and even excessive cigarette smoke all came in useful in disguising the limitations created. In this case however the limitations are deliberate as it is the crux of the story, the elemental mist at Le Havre and Man's mental mists playing havoc with lives.

Not surprisingly, plenty of erudite praise has been showered down on LQDB over the years. Essentially it remains only a entertainingly depressing adult yarn, with a straight-faced storyline coupled with some gloomy and gleaming but pleasing black and white photography. I think Renoir called it fascist in a patriotic outburst; for Carne to get past the disapproving censor Gabin couldn't even be called a deserter in the film (although his one night stand with Nelly was cheerfully depicted). Needless to say, this has probably led to some confusion over the years as to why Gabin is on the run (more like stroll) anyway! Anyway, Fascism and fascism are both dark and depressing for the majority of us so that would make LQDB a faithful representation!

This was the 2nd of Carne's classic 6 consecutive films, culminating in 1945 with Les Enfants Du Paradis. To my mind the quality of this series remains unsurpassed in world cinema - unless you can think of another director who made 6 timeless classics one after another? All subjective, of course!

Nevertheless, one of my favourite films, not to be watched too often but always an effective antidote to the real world. Next: Hotel Du Nord.

Jean Gabin and Michelle Morgan star in the stylish Marcel Carne film, "Port of Shadows," made in 1938. There is simply no one like Jean Gabin - Hollywood had no idea what to do with him - here he was, this amazing leading man who looked like a character actor. Thankfully, the French knew what they had and kept him busy for 48 years.

Gabin plays Jean, a military deserter who comes into the French port of Le Havre, intending to leave aboard ship for Venezuela. He meets the beautiful Nelly and is adopted by a small dog. Nelly is a real man magnet; she has a boyfriend Maurice, a father figure who is in love with her named Zabel, and Lucien, a hood in love with her. She and Jean fall in love, even though in her heart she knows that he has to leave Le Havre.

These French films out-noir American film noirs, and this is a stylish, dark film filled with sadness, with a depressing ambiance throughout. If you were miserable when you started watching it, you'll be a mess when it's over. What I've gone through for Gabin - he was in so many dark, depressing films! If you're a fan of film noir (and/or Gabin), this is for you.

Was there ever a better example of Poetic Realism (no, but one just as good, Le Jour Se Leve, from the same stable)than this, crafted exquisitely by the onlie begetters of the genre, Jacques Prevert - Marcel Carne. All the ingredients are present and accounted for; low-key lighting, atmos - perm any two from drizzle, sleet, cobbles, out-of-season resorts - and two doomed lovers who come together for one Mayfly moment in the sun before it all ends in tears to the distant sound of hammers striking firing pins and the heady, pungent aroma of cordite. Did anyone, with the possible exception of Bogie, do bruised tough better than Jean Gabin and pre-Audrey Hepburn were there ever so expressive eyes as Michele Morgan brought to the party. The Prevert-Carne team were on top of their game in this one which still holds up sixty years on. Purists may quibble that 'brumes' translates as mist rather than shadows but without a shadow of a doubt this is classic fare.

...lascivious, resentful old storekeepers, effete "toughs", thieving winos, crestfallen, impecunious artists and other downtrodden types. Like Duvivier's incomparable "Pepe Le Moko", "Port Of Shadows" is shrouded in mist. The fog here, however, doesn't evoke a sensual surrealism, but envelopes everything with a graven pallor and dampness. Indeed, everything here screams asphyxiation- Gabin is INCREDIBLE as a well-intentioned Byronic figure embittered by the realities and absurdities of war, whose near-consummate weltschmerz is offered salvation...until inescapable tragedy strikes. As a tragic poet of the cinema, I believe Carne was nearly unrivalled in the Golden Age of French film.

The thick veils of smog give the amplify the film's preoccupation with solitude and opacity- dialogue here is often barbed, strained and bitter, the world-weary cynicism of the characters betraying their immense suffering. Principles are a luxury in an age of disenchantment- the proprietor of Panama's is impassive towards the suicide of his resident Werther (his existentialist exclamation "What's the use?" accenting the futility of suicide- far from offering a reprieve from superfluity, it merely confirms it) while loyalty amongst Leguardier's posse is dispelled briskly after his humiliation. Superfluity is the order of the day- "The world is better off with one less good-for-nothing"..."He needs an identity...I can give him mine.". Each character is acutely aware of his own gratuitousness, and each of them tries desperately to cobble together a raison d'etre in the face of nothingness. When these collapse, as in the case of Michel, Zabal and Leguardier, they are driven to murder or suicide.

As with Les Enfants Du Paradis, Carne's forte lies in sculpting exquisitely intricate characters- the sheer HUMANITY of this movie warrants multiple viewings. Michel Simon's grotesque, graceless Zabal is brilliantly rendered- scorned doubly for his money and his cosmetic deficiencies, Zabal's resignation to a cruel fate (soul-corroding loneliness and a burgeoning moral ugliness) culminates in a death as clumsy and maladroit as his demeanor. His reverence for beauty, as exhibited in his adoration of Nelly and religious hymns, is severely at odds with his environs.

Leguardier, petty hoodlum, imitates American gangster archetypes gleaned from film and hardboiled novels, but his seemingly cocksure swagger is a poor facade for his suffocating ennui and moral cowardliness. Nelly, forbearing and forlorn, is prey to reveries of love, fantasies that promise fulfilment until the film's heartrending conclusion. Looming ominously in the background of the movie are questions on the purpose of art in this grim epoch- the characters on display are all victims of quixotic myths: of war, patriotism, love, crime, masculinity. The incongruities between these fables and cruel reality, the hideous gulf between romance and fact, these are perhaps the saddest truths the film yields.

The ending, seen in this light, is bittersweet- Jean, the tragic character par excellence who has said Yes to all that is absurd and obscene in his life, relinquishes all illusions about the impermanence of all things, including love. Nelly and Jean have achieved true communion, true intercourse, if even for an ephemeral moment. His death is a noble one, an affirmation and acceptance of transience. This is the happiest conclusion that Carne can offer, and even in the film's unrelenting fatalism there is fortitude and life-affirming courage. Camus would've given the thumbs up! In the absurd quandary of life, there is room for sentiment and fraternity, as long as we accept its temporal nature. In Proustian fashion, memory renews all things, so let us embalm these precious moments!