Dédée d'Anvers

In her break-out film role, Simone Signoret plays a girl at Bernard Blier's cheap nightclub in the Antwerp Harbor. Her pimp is Dalio, the door porter. She is scared of him. Blier treats his girls like family, insisting they help clear the tables after their communal meals; it's good training for when they get married, he says.

Into his menage enters Marcello Pagliero, a sailor who engages in some sort of illicit trade -- It's a Gabin sort of role, were this not a vehicle for Mlle Signor. Blier eyes him as marriage material for her, and soon they are much in love.

It was directed for Mlle Signoret by her then husband,Yves Allégret, and clearly intended as Marcel Carné poetic realism sort of movie; Allégret uses many actos who played for Carné. It's a poor effort, almost a burlesque of the form, but Mlle Signoret is luminous, and Blier is excellent.

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.

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.

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.

Simone SIGNORET as "Diddi from Antwerp"

Poetic realism is something like France's Black Series: dark noir atmosphere, stories of people on the fringes of society. Yves ALLEGRET was certainly not the most important director in this genre, but his films are definitely worth seeing. Especially when the later OSCAR winner Simone SIGNORET can be seen in it.

Dédée (Simone SIGNORET) ended up in Antwerp with her brutal pimp boyfriend Marcel DALIO. There you are suffering a bit from competition with the increasingly successful port of Hamburg. The curb swallow falls in love with an Italian captain (Marcello PAGLIERO) and gains hope for a better life. Bernard BLIER and Jane MANKEN can also be seen in other roles.

The film impresses with its atmosphere and also with its greater freedom compared to other films from the time. French films are simply more sensual than any other. And that's why they are rightly so popular. In addition to Simone SIGNORET, Marcello PAGLIERO in particular plays very well. As an actor he is known from the classic "Roma - Citta aperta", and as a screenwriter he was nominated for an OSCAR together with Klaus MANN and Federico FELLINI (and two others) for "PAISA".

This film, which is well worth seeing, will certainly be available in the ARTE media library for some time to come.