Port of Shadows

Interesting enough while it lasted I suppose...but in the end I found it sort of pointless.

I’ve seen it over and over and what always gets me is this phantasmic, purgatorial style that feels authentic although nothing about the style suggests it’ll work (“I don’t dream.” / “Everybody dreams.”). It’s so fatalistic and depressing a suicide comes and goes as a positive plot development; and yet, all strangers are kind and look out for one another - even stray dogs find purpose through momentary kindness. Its critique of war and resilience of human nature in response was naturally banned.

Beautifully shot and with moments of brilliance interspersed throughout, this is engaging and affecting if not quite a masterpiece. One of those movies that manage to create it's own small world in a short time and several of the side characters are intriguing enough that you wish there was more of them.

It's not really a noir but it has much of the same sensibilities although a much more subdued approach, focusing on the characters rather than the crime. Gabin does a great job of creating a compelling central character and guiding us through the seedy deserted port of shadows.

Feels predictable, perhaps because it's really among the first of its kind. Like Jean Gabin, love Michele Morgan, despise Michel Simon but in the case of this movie that's a good thing. And the cinematography is wonderful, foggy and mysterious.

# 966

Couldn't finish. Too French, too boring.

720

One of the most famous examples of what now is called "poetic realism"--though it's more poetic than realistic. Pauline Kael describes Jean as "the hopelessly rebellious hero, the decent man trapped by society; it was the beginning of the Jean Gabin era." Thank god...it paved the way for the much better "Le jour se lève" the next year. Kael: "[It's] gloomy and shallow, but at the time the defeatism of the film was like a breath of fresh air to American filmgoers saturated with empty optimism."

86.50

How utterly tragic. There's not anything particularly complex in the characters or technically brilliant in the filmmaking but sometimes simple melodrama just works.

"Poetic" sure, "realism" maybe not. The characters in this film, from Gabin's wandering soldier to Morgan's damsel in emotional distress, are archetypes meeting at a crossroads to their respective fates. Even the supporting characters are overflowing with passions, including suicide and gangsterdom. It's hard to take these things at face value, though, when the film presents such stylized artifice. A fairytale with doomed qualities, as if there's something lurking just underneath or just ahead.

An intricate web of relationships comes together in this noir-like romance. The cinematography is beautiful in its starkness, and the cast does well with a slightly-worn plot (with a disappointingly obvious ending).

A very fine film, with another winning performance from Jean Gabin. Takes a while to get interesting.

Cais das sombras estreava há 85 anos em Bruxelas. *insira aqui o meme do Tarkovski dizendo "poetic cinema". É ainda melhor do que me lembrava, quando digo que o Gabin dos anos 30 é meu sonho de consumo não estou brincando. Não lembrava o grau de asquerosidade e vilania que o Michel Simon passa aqui, certamente um dos mais abjetos antagonistas do cinema francês. Box Versátil O Cinema de Marcel Carné.

The city scenery provides a fitting atmosphere for the plot and Gabin pulls off a good performance.

Undeniably schematic, although not necessarily in such a bad way, and in what is beginning to seem characteristic for Carné, dialogue that feels complex in a way that comes off as "modern" even if the plot is more or less archetypal on an almost silent film level (again, not necessarily a bad thing). (I was going to say that Michèle Morgan might be the most unconvincing seventeen year old i've ever seen, but apparently she was born in 1920 so there you go?)

Marcel Carné's atmospheric crime/romance/melodrama was the first film labelled "film noir". It's easy to see it as a precursor with it's atmospheric black & white photography and collection of romantic losers and loathsome criminals.

An atmospheric and sensual film. The plot is naive and the characters are crudely drawn but rub together well enough for sparks to fly, and there's an adorable dog in it.

809

The first Marcel Carne film I saw remains my favorite. Completely other-worldly.

From the gloomy beginning to the gloomy end, the film is firm in tone and appetizing in appearance - the images feeding us with more information than the dialogue. Carnè certainly paint his morally ambiguous characters in a distinctive manner in this wonderful slice of poetic realism. He has a clear voice, and it's fascinating to listen to.

This is a really good French crime drama/romance. The only significant flaws are in the limited scenes involving any kind of action (which all look bad and unconvincing) and that at times it doesn't seem to flow exactly right. Sometimes scenes feel slightly disconnected. Overall, though, it's a very good film. I'm surprised it wasn't remade in Hollywood as a Bogart vehicle, because this role seems perfect for him. Some great writing and a cool dog that reminded me of the dog from Umberto D.

What a sad film. It's characters spend the entirety of the run time in the haze of a fog, literal and figurative. All of them have gotten themselves into some kind of trouble, yet none of them seem to know what to do next. That leaves only fleeting moments of love or fear to pass the time until death, separation, or some other tragedy. And yet, we somehow empathize with Gabin's soldier and Morgan's mysterious beauty. Carne's camerawork is beautiful--the cuts really seem intentional in this film.

French cinema in 1938 is so dark! Again Jean Gabin is a man of mystery and with a past better-not-mentioned. He meets one lost soul after the other as the story slowly takes shape into a splendid tragedy. Who is gonna forget the first images of Michèle Morgan?! Instant love! And Michel Simon puts on another classic weird guy performance! Director Marcel Carné creates a atmospheric film with a shelter out in the middle of nowhere being among the memorable moments I've seen.

#861

Cinematographically brilliant. Great dialogues, great photography, some solid cameraworks and, rare fact, virtually all the cuts seem well-thought. This is probably one of the first noir, so it gets credit for it. This said, it suffers from all the clichés of the type: the handsome mysterious brave guy, the femme fatale, the ugly villain (the naive plot?)... Plus some very masculine views of romance ("I lied to sleep with you, but I'm still a good guy, right?"). Still, it works well altogether