Dédée d'Anvers

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.

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!

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 Signoret. 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 a Marcel Carné poetic realism sort of movie; Allégret uses many actors who played for Carné. It's a poor effort, almost a burlesque of the form, but Mlle Signoret is luminous, and Blier is excellent.

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.

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.