“Port of Shadows,” or “The Dock of Mists” in French, was initially banned by the French government, as an opening title explains, for being “immoral, depressing and detrimental to young people.” That’s the antithesis of art, of course, and I’d like to think everybody here knows that, but you can also see why some unscrupulous philistine might have thought that way. “With every sunrise,” says Nelly (Michèle Morgan), “we think something new is going to happen, something fresh. Then the sun goes to bed and so do we.” Funny thing is, as the title suggests, the sun never rises in director Marcel Carné’s poetically realist film; there is just an omnipresent fog enveloping the French port city of Le Havre. That’s where French soldier Jean (Jean Gabin) arrives as “Port of Shadows” begins, having just saved a stray dog from being run over. It’s a hopeful and kind prologue belying a conclusion that is the opposite. This is a movie, after all, that doesn’t see swimmers as people splashing around in the water, as one character puts it, but people waiting to drown. Befitting the genre, that is just about the most poetically realist variation of glass half empty philosophy I’ve ever heard. Bravo.
Though it is never explicitly stated that Jean has gone AWOL, it is implied, nevertheless, in his search for a ship to take him out of Le Havre posthaste. If he is a deserter, Nelly is a runaway, having the fled the home where she lives with her godfather Zabel (Michel Simon) while also trying to evade the pursuit of gangster Lucien (Pierre Brasseur) who, in turn, is seeking her ex-boyfriend Maurice. Zabel is a real piece of work, masquerading as a worldly member of the community even as a self-pitying monster lurks just beneath. “It’s horrible to love like Romeo when you look like Bluebeard,” he says at one point which Simon turns into a comically horrifying whine of desperation. His demise is shocking, not for it happening but how it happens, filmed in canted angles, and scored to the church music the character prefers, a juxtaposition evoking the absence of God, as if we are all left to fend for ourselves. The only thing scarier than his death Lucien’s unnamed lady friend (Jenny Burnay, I think, based on the IMDb credits and accompanying photo which I note because I really want to give the actor credit for this) laughing at him after he is slapped in an amusement park by Jean that is so coldly mocking you can’t help but see why that paper gangster might finally be moved to the movie’s culminating act.
Jean and Nelly fall in love, of course, but it never feels quite real. That’s a compliment, not a criticism. It is also Carné’s intention, illustrated in Jean’s literal observation that theirs is “Like the movies…love at first sight.” And that’s why in eschewing shipping out to parts unknown to track down Nelly instead, he surrenders to the fantasy even as he opens himself up to Lucien’s revenge. That temptation to deny reality must have been alluring in 1938 France, what with the fall of the Popular Front and a looming World War. Between memory holing the COVID-19 pandemic and rewriting the January 6th insurrection as Not That Bad, America has lately been demonstrating a willingness to deny reality too. And as much as anything while watching “Port of Shadows,” I found myself wishing American movies would stop shrinking from this confusing, terrifying moment with so much of the SOS (same old streaming) and meet it with a whole new genre a la poetic realism to call our own.