Portas da Noite

Paris in December of 1945: Liberation, but the war goes on and people scramble to live in a frozen world. Yves Montand takes the metro to tell a friend's wife that he died six months earlier, only to find his friend there. They celebrate, they talk, we are introduced to the usual cast of eccentrics in Marcel Carne's small slice of magical realism and Montand meets the most beautiful girl in the world, Nathalie Nattier, and her traitorous brother, Serge Reggiani.

The cast of supporting characters is up to Carne's usual standards, including Jean Vilard as a tramp who thinks he's destiny, Pierre Brasseur as Miss Nattier's despised husband, Saturnin Fabre -- whom I first encountered in a Max Linder short from 35 years earlier -- as a grasping local junk dealer..... but why go on? Almost everyone is fine, except for the three actors at the center of this movie: Montand, Nattier and Reggiani, all of whom simply don't measure up.

Perhaps this is because the Montand and Nattier roles were originally written for Jean Gabin and Marlene Dietrich; when they dropped out, the roles had to be recast and the results were... unfortunate. Neither actor could project the world-weary gravitas required, and the entire movie, which might have been magnificent, is merely very good, carried by the supporting cast. Yet it makes one wish for the movie done right.

Prévert's script has no interest, Yves Montand and Nathalie Nattier play badly, the character of destiny is ridiculous. But the sets, the photography, some superb shots of Paris just after the war (Montmartre, the rotunda, the Bassin de la Villette, Jaurès, at the very beginning of the film), the songs of Kosma and Prévert, a certain atmosphere worth the detour.

Making my way through the films of Marcel Carné I come at last to this, which, after just watching Les Enfants du Paradis, can't help but feel somewhat lesser, and indeed the film does feel like less than the sum of its parts. There's some wonderful stretches but for it to work it needed to pull all of the strands of story together in a satisfying way by the end, and it doesn't, it just misses the mark. The pacing also drags in parts, particularly towards the end.

As often with foreign language films from the past, the English subtitles are poorly translated and unclear, making the point and subtext of certain passages hard to follow.

The fabric of the film is glorious, though, with a magical mood and ravishing photography. The premise of fated lovers is very nicely evoked, if not satisfactorily executed. Still very worth checking out though.

Usually I don't comment on previous comments however misguided or uninformed they may be but in this case I must refer to the only other comment that has been posted if only to explain to our Canadian correspondent the difference between an individual song heard within a movie and a movie 'score'. The score of a given film embraces every note of background music from beginning to end credits and whilst on occasion (In 'Breakfast At Tiffany's' for example composer Hank Mancini wrote an individual song, 'Moon River', with lyrics by Johnny Mercer, which Audrey Hepburn sang at one point) an individual song may be highlighted it is erroneous to refer to that song as the 'score' of the film (to continue with the BAT illustration, Mancini's background score was, at times, lilting and some time later a second single song, 'Lovers In New York' was published, using Mancini's background music). Whilst it is true that scriptwriter Jacques Prevert's poem, Les Feuilles Mortes, set to music most memorably by long-time collaborator Joseph Kosma, IS heard (though not to completion) in the film it is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a 'score'. As it happens a second Prevert poem, Les Enfants qui s'aiment (Children Who Love) is also heard in snatches in this great movie though ironically neither is sung by Yves Montand, who went on to 'own' Les Feuilles Mortes and also recorded Les Enfants qui s'aiment unforgettably on his 'Montand Chante Prevert' album. But what of the movie itself. It started with one strike on it; Jean Gabin and Marlene Dietrich, for whom the two leading roles had been tailored by Prevert, ankled shortly before shooting commenced so Carne tapped the inexperienced (in acting) Montand and the justifiably soon forgetten Nathalie Nattier as deps. As if that weren't enough the film was packaged as the most expensive ever made in France so expectations were high. We now have to consider the climate against which it was shot and made. We're talking 1946, lots of uneasiness in the air concerning collaboration, black marketeering, etc. Prevert gives us a fantasy - Montand meets a bum on the Metro who claims he is Destiny personified and predicts that Montand will meet later that same day the most beautiful woman in the world but after one mayfly moment he will lose her again - but a fantasy laced with the realism of black marketeering, post-war austerity, hints of collaboration. It was, arguably, the wrong theme at the wrong time and the egg it laid was such that it broke up the partnership of Prevert-Carne (who had just come off 'Les Enfants du Paradis') who had invented the concept of poetic realism and given the world such gems as Le jour se leve, Quai des brumes, les visiteurs du soir, etc. Seen today it is much easier to concentrate on its strenghs and delight in the first fledgling steps towards 'Great Actor' status taken by Yves Montand. In sum: a gem. ten stars, no question.

This French classic film, LES PORTES DE LA NUIT, is known in English as GATES OF THE NIGHT and sometimes as THE DOORS OF THE NIGHT (which is the translation of the title given in the new subtitles). The film has recently been reissued in France in a remastered form on DVD and Blu-Ray by Pathé, along with English subtitles and some extras. It can easily be ordered from French Amazon. This film is a masterpiece of world cinema, but I had never seen it before. It is entirely set in Paris on one night in July 1945. It is written by Jacques Prévert, and is possibly the most surrealistic of all the films he wrote. He intentionally has written a complex interweaving story involving many characters where the veil between this world and the next can be pierced, and where apparent 'coincidence' reigns supreme, in a heightened form, as a kind of divine synchronicity operating as Fate. Just so that we do not fail to understand, Prévert has written into the script a mysterious vagabond (called in the credits 'le clochard', i.e. 'the vagabond') who is a genuine visitor from the other world, disguised as a beggar. This strange innovation in cinema technique has precedents from Greek and Latin antiquity, of which Prévert was certainly well aware, for in those cultures the common people superstitiously believed that the gods sometimes came to earth disguised as vagabonds and came knocking at the door asking for shelter. One always had to give every vagabond his basic necessities of food and a place to sleep, for the gods were spying on us to see if we kept to the laws of hospitality, and if we dared to turn away a vagabond with contempt, a divine wrath might destroy us in retribution. Indeed, the most famous figure in ancient Greek literature who disguised himself as a vagabond was Homer's hero Odysseus (known in Latin as Ulysses), and although not a god, he was later worshipped as a demi-god on his home island of Ithaca, and I was present when some Greek archaeologists were excavating the remains of the ancient Odysseion, which was his shrine there. These visitations by supernatural or semi-supernatural beings haunted the ancient Greeks, and similar ideas were current in a debased form in Ireland with the elves, in England with the fairies and gnomes, and in Norway with the trolls. For most of human history, 'we were being watched' by the invisible powers. As it says in the American Christmas song about Santa Claus: 'he knows when you are sleeping, he knows when you awake, he knows if you are bad or good, so be good for goodness' sake'. And here in this film the eyes of Fate are upon all the characters in the form of a personage of mysterious mien. He is brilliantly played by a man who had never acted in a film before, Jean Vilar. He is the actual star of the film, and his gaze is perfect and what he says is just as perfect. When people demand to know who he is, he says 'Le Destin' (Destiny, Fortune, or Fate). He keeps trying to warn people of their impending fates, but they never listen to him, and he says to himself more than once: 'They are all the same, they never listen.' This story device actually works, and that is because the film is directed by the genius Marcel Carné. He and Prévert made several famous films together, in what has become known as the 'poetic realism' style. They include one of the greatest films of all time, LES ENFANTS DU PARADIS (1945), as well as JENNY (1936), LE QUAI DES BRUMES (1938), LE JOUR SE LEVE (1939), and LES VISITEURS DU SOIR (1942). This film is the most daring of them all, in having a supernatural character. It was also the last collaboration of the two men. One of the stars of this film is Yves Montand, aged 25, in his second credited film. He delivers a truly superb performance, including many lines of dialogue which a lesser actor could not have pulled off, because they bordered on the incredible. The entire cast are brilliant, the shots, framing, mood, atmosphere and editing are sheer perfection. The cinematography of Philippe Agostini is inspired. He worked with Carné once before, on LE JOUR SE LEVE (1939). The haunting music for this film was composed by the Hungarian Joseph Kosma (real name Kozma). It is played on the harmonica by Jean Vilar, and sung by Nathalie Nattier as well. In French, its lyrics were written by Prévert, and the song is entitled 'Les Feuilles Mortes'. But in English, with lyrics by Johnny Mercer, this film became the famous song 'Autumn Leaves', a number one hit song in America, which must have been recorded either with or without a voice a thousand times over the years and still features in muzak everywhere, and even gave its name to a subsequent Hollywood film with Joan Crawford in 1956. Kosma also wrote the music for two other Carné films, as well as several other famous French classics. The story of this film is multiple, but all is entwined. It is impossible in a brief space to summarize it. There are many supernatural elements linking all the characters together in a single night. Some meet their doom, others are left to sorrow perpetually. Tragedy reigns in this close-up view of the human condition. The hopes, the joys, the regrets, the melancholy, the delights, the disappointments, they are all there. And there are children and young people joyously romping around amidst it all. There is young love, there is old love, there is impossible love. This film is complex, just like Life. It is as divine as its mysterious vagabond. And we are the privileged witnesses of it all.