Les portes de la nuit

"Les portes de la nuit" is an important movie ,weren't it only because it's Carné's last genuine unquestionable classic ,the last link on the chain which began with "Jenny" in 1936.All these works but one ("hotel du Nord, classic too anyway)" were written by Jacques Prevert :"drole de drame" "quai des brumes ""le jour se leve" "les visiteurs du soir " and the grandiose "les enfants du paradis" which currently makes the IMDb top 250 where it should be ,as it is in France, well ahead of "Leon" "Amelie" or "les quatre cents coups" if there were ,sometimes ,justice in the universe.

After "les enfants du paradis" -which was voted best French film of all time in a poll in 1979 -anything would ne a letdown.That's why the movie met mixed(and even chilly) critical reception when it was released.After the coming of the nouvelle vague whose young Turks used to hate "old hat" Carné ,one could have thought that "les portes de la nuit would be relegated to purgatory eternally.But young genrations have discovered it and a lot of people appreciate it now (as the IMDb rating shows).Carne's eternal subject :love ,true love against the b.......s ,is here given just one night;one night to meet the most beautiful woman in the world ,but also one night to meet the war profiteers,the cowards ,the vile fathers,all that war destroyed .Carné's "realisme" is given a rough ride anyway ,for some settings are almost ...surrealist,evoking Greek tragedy .Prevert/Kosma's words to "les feuilles mortes" are wistful and deeply moving ;"la vie sépare ceux qui s'aiment tout doucement sans faire de bruit"(life comes between lovers ,gently,without a sound)

"Les portes de la nuit" ,what a wonderful title.the film begins at dusk,in a metro station that was entirely built in the studio.Carne thoroughly dismissed the label "realisme poetique" because none of his film sets was real (the "hotel du nord" ,the chateau in "les visiteurs du soir" ,the boulevard du crime" in "les enfants du paradis,the list is endless).And the movie ends at dawn ,when Paris awakes.

Carné would never achieve such a peak again.He made commendable works afterward ("Therese Raquin" "les tricheurs" )but those works do not "add up".Still,he remains through his 1936-1945 heyday,one of the absolute masters of the French cinema.

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.

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.

It is tough not to defend an openly homosexual director, but I just cannot respond positively to Marcel Carne's films. I have tried them all, and despite a certain liking for ' Hotel du Nord ' I am perhaps not in the position to judge his films. I have tried, and I have seen them all including his ludicrous last film ' The Marvellous Visit ' ( where a clearly homoerotic angel falls naked to the earth ) but in some way that films pseudo-romanticism plays back to his former films. I am not sure how to define poetic realism, but it must be said I find it fake. I am equally unhappy about the Nouvelle Vague scorning him, as I suspect there were reasons based also on homophobia (try to think of one same-sex scenario among that new wave when some of them could have at least tried, and you will fail.) But I still resist Carne's sentimental/bitter approach to humanity. In ' Les Portes de la nuit ' it is in full strength with suicide, lost lovers mixing with black marketeers and collaborationists. I can only compare this to a case of' bad faith ' expressed so well in Jean-Paul Sartre's philosophy. The plot has been mulled over by previous reviewers, but I will simply say it has a sort of classical structure which lasts through one night before dawn, hence the title. Yves Montand plays a man who gets off the metro in a poor part of Northern Paris and there meets up with some of its occupants. There he meets ' Destiny ' in the form of a beggar, who like the angel in Carne's last film has fallen to earth. Jean Vilar plays him fairly well predicting unhappy deaths, and surprise, surprise so-called destiny is right. No more spoilers and tediously the film drags its weary way to its dismal and depressing climax. I did not believe in any of it, and the visual aspect of the set bound district of Paris, trying to be ' authentic ' fails as well. As for the other lead actors Serge Reggiani plays a traitor far too hysterically and the leading actress acts very badly indeed. So why am I giving it 5 ? Because I may just be wrong, and I may watch it again, and just maybe I will be in the right mood to respond to it.

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.