Criterion Sunday 245: Le Quai des brumes (Port of Shadows, 1938)

People talk about this being a proto-noir, and I’ll defer to those more knowledgeable about their genres than I am, but it somehow feels less doomed, though it’s bleakly fatalistic in its way. It does, however, have an amazing sense of setting, as fog constantly closes in around all the characters in the port setting of Le Havre, shot by the great Eugen Schüfftan, who did Metropolis amongst others and so has a hand in defining how noir might (and would come to) look. It’s been described as “poetic realism”, and this feels like Carné’s thing in this film, harking back to earlier examples of the style through the casting of L’Atalante‘s Michel Simon. Jean Gabin’s army deserter Jean finds himself trying his best to stay out of trouble, but as they say trouble constantly seems to stick to him, like the fog, the oppressive sets, and the petulant baby-faced pretend-gangster Lucien (Pierre Brasseur) who’s on his case the whole time. It’s all rather glorious.

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FILM REVIEW: Criterion Collection
Director Marcel Carné; Writer Jacques Prévert (based on the novel by Pierre Mac Orlan); Cinematographer Eugen Schüfftan; Starring Jean Gabin, Michel Simon, Michèle Morgan, Pierre Brasseur; Length 91 minutes.

Seen at home (DVD), London, Sunday 31 March 2019.

Criterion Sunday 141: Les Enfants du paradis (aka Children of Paradise, 1945)

It’s a grand achievement; any review you look at will tell you that. Made when it was, at the scale it was made, it shouldn’t have been possible, but yet it’s a big, bold, crowded film teeming with life. Of course, it’s still a grand handsome well-mounted epic that trades on all those classic (and classical) qualities of Cinema Art: a woman whose amorous conquests, or those attempts of her suitors, seem to allegorise a political situation; a witty script of over-talkative thespian types exploring the power of art; big camera moves; and mass crowd scenes for spectacle. I admire it even if I (philistine that I may be) never quite love it, but admiration goes a long way so I expect I’ll watch it again some day and admit it’s a masterpiece.

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FILM REVIEW: Criterion Collection
Director Marcel Carné; Writer Jacques Prévert; Cinematographers Marc Fossard and Roger Hubert; Starring Arletty, Jean-Louis Barrault, Pierre Brasseur, Marcel Herrand, María Casares; Length 190 minutes.

Seen at Paramount, Wellington, Thursday 25 June 1998 (and most recently on DVD at a friend’s home, London, Sunday 29 January 2017).