Port of Shadows

“Thanks to you, I’ve been happy once in my life.” In a lonely flophouse on a spit of land at the edge of Le Havre, outsiders converge: Jean Gabin’s hungry, broke, pugnacious, probably AWOL soldier; mysterious teenager Michèle Morgan in iconic beret and plastic raincoat; cheerfully disillusioned painter Robert Le Vigan; knickknack shopkeeper Michel Simon, proclaiming his honesty and love for sacred music, but sporting one of the cinema’s creepiest beards; and homme dur wannabe Pierre Brasseur, perpetually in search of the missing “Maurice.” Ultimately the choice comes down to a ship out or a continuing pursuit of a sudden love, in the first of the worldwide successes of director Marcel Carné and screenwriter Jacques Prévert (Le Jour se Lève, Children of Paradise, etc.), the archetypal exemplar of pre-war poetic realism. This stunning new Studiocanal restoration features an all-new translation and subtitles by Lenny Borger.

Five Stars [highest rating] "PRE-WAR PERFECTION! Everything in Jacques Prévert’s script is essential—seemingly throwaway lines loop back to revelations, and shoulder shrugs sum up characters—without sacrificing an overarching, undefinable sense of operatic futility. For these outcasts, life is as heavy and elusive as the fog that never abates in this port town; and the film’s greatness arises from its belief in the transcendence of impermanence, in the immortality of fleeting but true affections." – Eric Hynes, Time Out New York

“A MARVELLOUSLY MOODY THRILLER! Seldom has the seedy side of life seemed so utterly seductive.” – Geoff Andrew