Le quai des brumes aka Port of Shadows (1938) An Original French Noir

Directed by Marcel Carné 

Director of (Hôtel du Nord (1938), Le jour se lève (1939), Les portes de la nuit (1946), Thérèse Raquin (1953), and Trois chambres à Manhattan (1965)). 

Written by Jacques Prévert, dialogues by Jacques Prévert,  and based on Pierre Mac Orlan's novel,

The film stars Jean Gabin as Jean, Michel Simon as Zabel, Michèle Morgan as Nelly, Pierre Brasseur as Lucien

The Story 

Night. A milestone tells us we are 20 clicks from Le Havre  A "cab-over" truck, a 1937 Renault AGR, is something like you see in old R. Crumb comics. It's coming down a road. It's headlights stab through the dark, through the patches of fog.

Jean, an AWO soldier, is walking down the same road. He gets picked up in the light from the headlamps of the Renault. He turns around to face the breaking truck with his hands up asking for a ride

The driver asks him where he's going. Le Havre, "hop in" that's where he's going too. Jean hops in and isn't very talkative. The driver offers him a smoke.

When they get near le Havre the driver nudges Jean awake. Soon after a stray dog runs across the road in front of the truck, Jean see's it first and instinctively grabs the wheel turning it enough to jump a curb and miss the animal. 

The driver gets pissed off and they both get out of the truck meeting in front of the headlights. The driver has grabbed a monkey wrench. They cool it off with some smokes, the drive tells Jean to keep the rest of the pack. 

Jean Gabin as Jean the soldier

The truck driver hops back in the truck and backs it off the curb and out into the road, and they part ways right at the outskirts of le Havre. The stray dog has now attached himself to Jean.

We cut to Au Petit Tabarin  a nightclub. Two young hoodlums Lucien and "The Orphan," have invited Zabel a businessman to the club and are shaking  him down for information. 

Pierre Brasseur as Lucien  

Claude Walter as  L'orphelin

Michel Simon as Zabel the business man

Zabel tells them he hates this nightclub music. They want information about what happened to a man named Marcel. Lucien tells Zabel that he and Marcel had a falling out and that Lucien doesn't want to get blamed if anything did happen to Marcel. 

Zabel tells them he's very disappointed in them. He knows their families. He even mentions that Lucien used to play the piano. He gets up and walks out. The Orphan wants to stop him but Lucien tells him that they will pick up Zabel later at a better time. 

We cut back to Jean as he walks further into town with the stray dog now following him. When he gets outside of the nightclub he passes Zabel on his way down the street. There's a drunk Quart Vittel, arguing with the doorman. Jean  in passing gets his coat pulled on by Vittel, who now accompanies Jean down the street.  

Jean Gabin with Raymond Aimos  as Quart Vittel

Jean is just trying to get away from the guy, when he spots some MP's walking towards them out of the fog ahead. 

Jean freezes and the drunk hides him behind a door until they pass. The drunk tells Jean now he knows what's going on and if he needs a quite place to lay low go to Panama's an off the beaten track backwater dive bar. They both head off towards Panama's.

If you want to lay low, you want to go to Panama's

Panama's

At Panama's Jean meets the owner, and a painter. Panama offers Jean some food and brings him into the kitchen, and give him some bread and sausage. There he meets Nelly a young woman. For Jean it's love at first sight.

Édouard Delmont as Panama

Michèle Morgan as Nelly

Jean cuts off some sausage and tosses a piece to the dog.

Nelly: Is the dog yours?

Jean: Yes.

Nelly: He has a nice face.

Jean: So do you. Your pretty, and I like you. I mean it, You're skinny but I like you, It's like in the movies, love at first sight. I'm love struck.

He goes on to explain to her that he got hit with the arrow by the little fellow with wings. Its a meet cute sort of. Jean goes on talking about the differences between men and women. Nelly replies that they can still fall in love.

Their conversation is broken up by gunshots nearby.

Cut to Lucien's 1934 Renault Vivasport Cabriolet with a rumble seat. Zabel who was kidnapped by Lucien and his gang was taken out the wastelands to get worked over near Panama's. 

Zabel manages to escape. None of their gunshots hit home and Zabel and heads over the industrial wastelands towards Panama's beckoning lights in the distance. Lucien tells his men to hop in the car and they'll have to drive the longer way around. 

When they get to Panama's, Panama already got the door locked and tells them he's closed. Panama shoots off his gun into the ceiling to tell them he means business. 

Lucien and the gang back off and use the car for cover and start shooting randomly into Panama's. When Panama retaliates by shooting out one of their headlights they split.

Zabel comes out of hiding once Lucien leaves, he soon heads back to town. At daylight Jean, Nelly and Vittel all leave Panama's except the artist. 

Before he splits with Nelly Jean asks Panama if he can get him some civies and size 7 1/2 shoes. Panama tells him he'll see what he can do. Panama grabs his guitar and starts strumming music.

The artist overhears, mentions that his shoes are 7 1/2 and after Jean leaves with Nelly the artist tells Panama that Jean can have his identity, and that he's going for a swim. 

Robert Le Vigan as Le peintre 

It takes a few moments before Panama figures out what he's saying, and he finally puts down his guitar and follows le peintre outside, and sees there just a pile of clothes on the shore. He calls to the artist out in the water but he disappears in the fog. Panama grabs his clothes and shoes brings them inside. 

Jean and Nelly are sitting on the edge of a quay. Nearby a cargo ship is being unloaded of what it brought, and loaded for it's next destination. 

While they are conversing, Lucien and his gang drive by. Lucien spots Nelly and Jean, and he tells his wheel man to stop. 

As Nelly and Jean walk away from quay. Nelly slips some money into his coat pocket on the sly. Lucien get out of the car and walk over towards Nelly and Jean. Lucien calls Nelly over and she walks over to Lucien while his two men stand between Jean and them. They act like they would stop Jean if he comes too close.

Jacquez in rumble seat of a 1934 Renault Vivasport Cabriolet

Lucien asks Nelly if she knows where Marcel is. She doesn't know. Then he asks why is she friendly to everyone else even this new guy Jean and not him. Lucien grabs Nelly and is trying to kiss her, while she is fighting him off. 

She yells, Jean comes over followed by his two goons. Lucien trying to act the big shot tells Jean to go throw pebbles in the water. Jean stands his ground. 

Jacques the biggest goon makes a move and Jean knocks him down. L'orphelin backs off. 

Lucien asks Jean not to hit him. Jean grabs Lucien by his coat collar and starts slapping him around. Lucien looks like he's gonna cry and the two goons notice it. 

Looks like Lucien is gonna cry.

Lucien hops into the Renault and tell his men to get out of here. 

Nelly runs off to catch a street car. Jean puts his hand in his pocket and discovers the money that Nelly put there and calls after her. She doesn't hear.

Jean walks down towards the piers looking for a ship to skip out on.

Back a Zabel's shop he gets confronted once again by Lucien. In a long overcoat Lucien looks like a hotheaded kid. Zabel tells him nothing and Jacques has to physically restrain him from shooting Zabel. It's almost like a Daffy Duck cartoon the way Lucien squirms in his grasp. Like kids. After Jacques pulls him out of the shop, L'orphelin hangs back and tells Zabel about Lucien being rough with Nelly and then getting slapped around for it by a soldier.

Lucien got slapped around by a soldier.

Soon Nelly walks into the shop. Zabel is her guardian, he asks her where she was all night, She tells him she was walking around. Probably looking for Marcel. Zabel is acting just a little too interested in her. He seems more jealous than concerned. 

Le Havre waterfront circa 1937. 

Venezuela

Jean eventually finds a ship that is leaving soon for Venezuela. Jean eventually has made his way into town. 

Jean is checking out civilian clothes. He can't use his uniform. 

He just coincidentally stops outside Zabel's shop. He wants to spend the money Nelly slipped him on a small ornate glass container he spots in the window. 

He goes into the shop and asks to see the container. He tells Zabel that he wants to buy it and have it engraved Nelly and Jean. Zabel puts two and two together and calls Nelly into the shop. Zabel is thinking I can use this guy against Lucien. 

Zabel wants to give Jean the container as a present, for protecting Nelly. Zabel has Nelly go down to the wine cellar to grab them a bottle of wine in celebration. 

It starts to go Noirsville when Nelly, about to come up from the wine cellar spots the missing Marcel's cufflink laying under the steps. She grabs it, and now troubled, comes upstairs. But now she's filled with anxiety, and  hatred for Zabel, knowing that he probably murdered Marcel. When she comes upstairs she faints, and drops the cufflink. Zabel figures out what is going on and tells her to go lay down.

When Nelly is out of the room he makes a proposal to Jean. He wants him to lure Lucien down to the waterfront and kill him. WTF?. Jean gets up and knocks him around. He's just a deserter not a murderer, and tells him no. 

Noirsville.

A Port of Shadows is right. Shadows. The story starts with a truck driving out of a shadow and fog. The dog runs out of a shadow. Everybody in this story are shadowy figures. Their occupations are shadowy. A night run truck driver, midnight rider. A deserting soldier. A town drunk. A waterfront dive bar operator. A young woman, looking for her first lover who vanished. A shadowy business man. T

The actual "quai des brooms" is a spot along the shore where the tide currents deposit the flotsam, jetsam, and occasionally the shadows aka the unidentifiable dead bodies of the harbor.

It's all woven into a very bleak melancholic Noir.  

Then the dog who started the tale by stopping the truck where it did, ends it by running back into the shadows on the same road from the beginning, nice touch.

As Noir as it gets 10/10