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{{Short description|1938 film by Marcel Carné}}
{{Infobox film
| name           = Port of Shadows
| image          = Lequaidesbrumesnew.jpg
| caption        = original poster
| writer         = [[Jacques Prévert]] (scenario and dialogue)<br />[[Pierre Mac Orlan]] (novel)
| starring       = [[Jean Gabin]]<br />[[Michel Simon]]<br />[[Michèle Morgan]]<br />[[Pierre Brasseur]]
| director       = [[Marcel Carné]]
| producer       = [[Gregor Rabinovitch]]
| music          = [[Maurice Jaubert]]
| cinematography = [[Eugen Schüfftan]]
| editing        = [[René Le Hénaff]]
| studio         = Franco London Films
| distributor    = Osso Films (France)<br />Film Alliance of the United States Inc. (US)
| released       = {{Film date|1938|05|18|France|df=y}}
| runtime        = 91 min
| country        = France
| language       = French
| budget         =
}}

'''''Port of Shadows''''' ({{langx|fr|Le Quai des brumes}} {{IPA|fr|lə kɛ de bʁym|}}, "The dock of mists") is a 1938 French film directed by [[Marcel Carné]]. An example of [[poetic realism]], it stars [[Jean Gabin]], [[Michel Simon]] and [[Michèle Morgan]]. The screenplay was written by [[Jacques Prévert]] based on a novel by [[Pierre Mac Orlan]].<ref name="filmsdefrance">{{cite web|url=http://filmsdefrance.com/FDF_Quai_des_brumes_rev.html|title=Le Quai des brumes/Port of Shadows|publisher=filmsdefrance.com|access-date=2008-12-26}}</ref> The music score was by [[Maurice Jaubert]]. The film was the 1939 winner of France's top cinematic prize, the [[Prix Louis-Delluc]].

According to Charles O'Brien, the film is one of the earliest to be called [[film noir]] by critics (1939, France).<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.williamahearn.com/streetsparis.html|title=The Streets of Paris|website=www.williamahearn.com}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=https://carleton.ca/filmstudies/people/obrien-charles/|title=O'Brien, Charles – Film Studies|website=carleton.ca}}</ref>

==Plot==
On a foggy night, Jean (Jean Gabin), an army deserter, catches a ride to the port city of [[Le Havre]]. Hoping to start over, Jean finds himself in a lonely bar at the far edge of town. However, while getting a good meal and civilian clothes, Jean meets Nelly (Michèle Morgan), a 17-year-old who has run away from her godfather, Zabel, with whom she lives. Jean and Nelly spend time together over the following days, but they are often interrupted by Zabel, who is also in love with her, and by Lucien, a gangster who is looking for Nelly's ex-boyfriend, Maurice, who has recently gone missing. Jean resents the intrusions of Lucien and twice humiliates him by slapping him. When Nelly finds out that her godfather killed Maurice out of jealousy, she uses the information to blackmail him and prevent him from telling the police that Jean is a deserter. Although the two are in love, Jean plans to leave on a ship for Venezuela. At the last minute Jean leaves the ship to say goodbye to Nelly; he saves her from the hands of Zabel, whom he kills, but when they go out on to the street he is shot in the back by Lucien and dies in her arms.

==Cast==
*[[Jean Gabin]] as Jean
*[[Michel Simon]] as Zabel
*[[Michèle Morgan]] as  Nelly
*[[Pierre Brasseur]] as Lucien
*[[Édouard Delmont]] as Panama
*[[Raymond Aimos]] as Quart Vittel
*[[Robert Le Vigan]] as Le peintre
*[[René Génin]] as Le docteur
*[[Marcel Pérès (actor)|Marcel Pérès]] as  Le chauffeur
*[[Léo Malet (actor)|Léo Malet]] as Le soldat
*[[Jenny Burnay]] as  L'amie de Lucien
*[[Roger Legris]]  as Le garçon d'hôtel
*[[Martial Rèbe]] as  Le client

==Style==
The film is in the style that Carné was most associated with, [[poetic realism]]. [[Lucy Sante]] writes that "''Port of Shadows'' possesses nearly all the qualities that were once synonymous with the idea of French cinema. Gabin—eating sausage with a knife or talking around a cigarette butt parked in the corner of his mouth or administering a backhanded slap to Brasseur—is the quintessential French tough guy, as iconic a figure as Bogart playing Sam Spade. Michèle Morgan, ethereal and preoccupied, may pale a bit in comparison to some of her sisters in Parisian movies of the time (Arletty, for example), but she comes to life in bed, in a scene you can’t imagine occurring in an American movie before 1963 or so. The hazy lights, the wet cobblestones, the prehensile poplars lining the road out of town, the philosophical gravity of peripheral characters, the idea that nothing in life is more important than passion—such things defined a national cinema that might have been dwarfed by Hollywood in terms of reach and profit but stood every inch as tall as regards grace and beauty and power."<ref>{{cite web|last=Sante|first=Lucy|title=Port of Shadows|url=http://www.criterion.com/films/947-port-of-shadows|publisher=The Criterion Collection|access-date=10 April 2012}}</ref>

==Reception==
[[Frank S. Nugent]] in ''The New York Times'' wrote that the film is "one of the most engrossing and provocative films of the season"; according to him, "it's a thorough-going study in blacks and grays, without a free laugh in it; but it is also a remarkably beautiful motion picture from the purely pictorial standpoint and a strangely haunting drama. As a steady diet, of course, it would give us the [[wikt:willies|willies]]; for a change it's as tonic as a raw winter's day."<ref>{{cite web| url= https://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9A0DE3DF143EE432A25753C3A9669D946894D6CF | title= ''Port of Shadows'', a Somber French Film, at the New Central | author= Frank S. Nugent | author-link= Frank S. Nugent | date= October 30, 1939 | work= [[The New York Times]] | access-date=November 3, 2011}}</ref> At the time of its release, the film was widely criticized for being too negative about the State and moral character of the French.{{citation needed|date=December 2016}}

Over 60 years after its premiere, Lucy Sante, writing about the film for its DVD release by [[Criterion Collection]], called the film a "definitive example of the style known as '[[poetic realism]]'. The ragged outlines, the lowdown settings, the romantic fatalism of the protagonists, the movement of the story first upward toward a single moment of happiness and then down to inexorable doom—the hallmarks of the style had germinated in some form or other through the decade, but in Marcel Carné's third feature they came together as archetypes."<ref name="cc2004">{{cite web| url= http://www.criterion.com/current/posts/335-port-of-shadows | title= Port of Shadows| work= Essay | author= Lucy Sante | author-link= Lucy Sante | date= July 19, 2004 | publisher= [[Criterion Collection]] | access-date= 2011-11-03}}</ref>

Danish director [[Carl Theodor Dreyer|Carl Dreyer]] included ''Port of Shadows'' in his top 10 film list.<ref>{{cite web| url= http://www.listology.com/dgeiser13/story/recommendations-directors-favorite-films | title= Recommendations: Directors' Favorite Films | publisher= listology.com{{Self-published inline|date=November 2011}} | access-date=2011-11-03}}</ref>

A scene from the film is seen projected in the 2007 [[80th Academy Awards|Academy Award]]-winning dramatization of [[Ian McEwan]]'s wartime tragic drama ''[[Atonement (2007 film)|Atonement]]''.

==Home media==
Before July 2004,<ref name="cc2004"/> [[Criterion Collection]] gave the film a "bare-bones" release, with a booklet and limited on-screen special features; according to James Steffen of  Turner Classic Movies, the DVD's "high-definition transfer does justice to [[Marcel Carné|Carné]], [[Eugen Schüfftan|Schufftan]] and [[Alexandre Trauner|Trauner]]'s richly detailed vision", though there are issues because of the "highly variable" quality of the [[35mm movie film|35mm film]] used: "Within the same scene some shots can be startlingly clear, while others are very grainy and have much weaker contrast and detail. On the balance, it still looks extremely good for a film of this vintage." Steffen also noted the "mono sound is clear and without too much distortion. The characters use lots of colorful slang whose flavor is difficult to translate into English, but the subtitles do an admirable job."<ref>{{cite web| author= James Steffen | title= Le Quai des Brumes | work= Home Video Review | publisher= Turner Classic Movies| url= https://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/86954/le-quai-des-brumes#articles-reviews |access-date= 2011-11-03}}</ref>

==References==
{{Reflist}}

== External links ==
* {{IMDb title|0030643}}
* {{tcmdb title|86954}}
* [http://filmsdefrance.com/FDF_Quai_des_brumes_rev.html ''Le Quai des brumes/Port of Shadows''] at filmsdefrance.com
* [https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/335-port-of-shadows ''Port of Shadows''] an essay by [[Lucy Sante]] at the [[Criterion Collection]]

{{Marcel Carné}}
{{Jacques Prévert}}
{{National Board of Review Award for Best Foreign Language Film}}

{{Authority control}}

[[Category:1938 films]]
[[Category:1938 crime drama films]]
[[Category:1938 romantic drama films]]
[[Category:French romantic drama films]]
[[Category:French black-and-white films]]
[[Category:Louis Delluc Prize winners]]
[[Category:Films directed by Marcel Carné]]
[[Category:Films with screenplays by Jacques Prévert]]
[[Category:French crime drama films]]
[[Category:Films about deserters]]
[[Category:1930s French-language films]]
[[Category:1930s French films]]
[[Category:Films scored by Maurice Jaubert]]
[[Category:Films based on works by Pierre Mac Orlan]]