Billed as a proto-film noir, this is as gorgeously evocative as you might expect from a Renoir film of this period, which like Carné’s Port of Shadows (also with Gabin, and released the same year) has a way of conjuring a complex tangle of emotions out of the grey, smoke-filled skies of an industrial setting (Le Havre features in both films). Here, everyone is a creep though, not least Gabin’s protagonist, who confesses his familial madness is the desire to kill women, which is a pretty big flaw and makes him rather hard to sympathise with, but not exactly out of keeping with the genre. That said, the femme fatale (Simone Simon) is herself mixed up in a murder plot with her husband (Fernand Ledoux), who also has a tendency towards violent jealous rage, so really nobody comes off particularly well in this story, and one is left shaking one’s head at the futile pointlessness of everything by the end — which may well have been Renoir/Zola’s intention, but makes it difficult to love.
FILM REVIEW: Criterion Collection
Director Jean Renoir; Writers Renoir and Denise Leblond (based on the novel by Émile Zola); Cinematographer Curt Courant; Starring Jean Gabin, Simone Simon, Fernand Ledoux; Length 96 minutes.
Seen at home (Mubi streaming), London, Thursday 21 May 2020.