Le Jour Se Lève (Marcel Carné, 1939)

Cast: Jean Gabin, Jules Berry, Arletty, Jacqueline Laurent, Mady Berry, René Génin, Arthur Devère, René Bergeron, Bernard Blier, Marcel Pérès, Germaine Lix, Gabrielle Fontan, Jacques Baumer. Screenplay: Jacques Viot, Jacques Prévert. Cinematography: Philippe Agostini, André Bac, Albert Viguier, Curt Courant. Production design: Alexandre Trauner. Film editing: René Le Hénauff. Music: Maurice Jaubert. 

Daybreak, the Anglicized title of Marcel Carné's Le Jour Se Lève, recalls another great attempt at poetic cinema, F.W. Murnau's late silent Sunrise (1927). But where Murnau strove for a kind of allegorical poetry, to the extent of labeling his characters The Man, The Wife, and The Woman From the City, Carné's poetry is rooted in actuality. Jean Gabin plays François, a factory worker who falls in love with Françoise (Jacqueline Laurent), who works in a flower shop. He follows her one night to a music hall, where she watches an act by the animal trainer Valentin (Jules Berry). At the bar, he strikes up a conversation with Clara (Arletty), who was Valentin's stage assistant but has just broken up with him. When he discovers that Françoise is infatuated with Valentin, François lets himself be drawn into a relationship with Clara. Eventually this quartet of relationships will turn fatal. But Carné and his screenwriters Jacques Viot and Jacques Prévert choose to tell the story in flashbacks: The film begins with François shooting Valentin and then holing up in his apartment as the police lay siege to it, trying to arrest him. The film superbly mixes suspense, as we wait for the outcome of François's standoff with the police, with romance, as we learn of the affairs with Françoise and Clara that brought him to this point. It's often cited as a precursor of film noir for its mixture of passion and violence. Gabin is the quintessential world weary protagonist, Berry the embodiment of corruption, and Arletty the woman who's seen it all too often.  

Port of Shadows (Marcel Carné, 1938)

Jean Gabin and Michèle Morgan in Port of Shadows

Cast: Jean Gabin, Michel Simon, Michèle Morgan, Pierre Brasseur, Édouard Delmont, Raymond Aimos, Robert Le Vigan, René Génin, Marcel Pérès, Jenny Burnay, Roger Legris, Martial Rèbe. Screenplay: Jacques Prévert, based on a novel by Pierre Mac Orlan. Cinematography: Eugen Schüfftan. Production design: Alexandre Trauner. Film editing: René Le Hénaff. Music: Maurice Jaubert. 

Marcel Carné's Port of Shadows is a variation on the old trope of the stranger come to town. In this case, the stranger is an army deserter named Jean (Jean Gabin) and the town is Le Havre, where he hopes to hop a freighter and leave the country. Instead, he gets involved with a beautiful young woman named Nelly (Michèle Morgan) and finds himself depending on the kindness of strangers, one of whom is so kind as to commit suicide and leave him with a suit of clothes, an ID card, and some money. Others, including Nelly's guardian, Zabel (Michel Simon), and his gangster associates, are not so kind. It's a movie that goes a long way on the atmosphere created by Eugen Schüfftan's cinematography, Alexandre Trauner's set designs, and the slangy poetry of Jacques Prévert's dialogue. Oh, and there's a cute little dog who falls in love with Jean, too. Maybe the quintessential French film, the way Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942) is the quintessential American movie, Port of Shadows has plenty of admirers, but a good many people also think its Gallic Weltschmerz takes it well past the point of self-parody.  

Les Portes de la Nuit (Marcel Carné, 1945)

Nathalie Nattier, Yves Montand, and Jean Vilar in Les Portes de la Nuit

Jean Diego: Yves Montand
Malou: Nathalie Nattier
Georges: Pierre Brasseur
The Homeless Man: Jean Vilar
Guy Sénéchal: Serge Reggiani
M. Sénéchal: Saturnin Fabre
Raymond Lécuyer: Raymond Bussières
Claire Lécuyer: Sylvia Bataille
Cricri Lécuyer: Christian Simon
M. Quinquina: Julien Carette
Étiennette: Dany Robin
Étiennette's Boyfriend: Jean Maxime

Director: Marcel Carné
Screenplay: Jacques Prévert
Cinematography: Philippe Agostini
Production design: Alexandre Trauner
Film editing: Jean Feyte, Marthe Gottié
Music: Joseph Kosma

Marcel Carné's Les Portes de la Nuit was a flop in postwar France, and its poetically vague title may indicate some of the reasons why. The film attempts to walk a line between whimsy and tragedy, its vision of life in postwar Paris a little too suffused with romantic melancholy for audiences grappling with the day-to-day uncertainties of existence. The setting is February 1945, after the liberation of Paris but before the end of the war, a period that feels like a kind of limbo. A homeless man with the gift of foreseeing other people's fates walks through the streets, first encountering our protagonist, Jean Diego, a former member of the Resistance, on the Métro, Jean is going to see the wife of Raymond Lécuyer, a fellow Resistance fighter, to tell her that her husband is dead. But when he breaks the news, she bursts out laughing, whereupon the door opens to reveal a very much alive Lécuyer, who wants to know what's so funny. Jean, it turns out, had been captured along with Lécuyer and had overheard the orders sending him to the firing squad, but the execution didn't take place. Eventually, the plot will reveal who ratted on Lécuyer, and the homeless man will predict the rat's fate. But this story of the clash of Resistance and collaboration takes a secondary place in the film to the romance that develops between Jean and the beautiful Malou, the wife of Georges, who made his fortune in armaments during the war, as the film turns into a muddle of coincidences. Carné was a great director, and even this weakling among his films gives us something to watch, including a performance by the 25-year-old Yves Montand. He's a bit too young for the role, given that Jean was supposed to be a soldier of fortune before the war, but he was Carné's second choice after Jean Gabin, whom the director wanted to co-star with Marlene Dietrich as Malou. After starting to work with Carné, Gabin and Dietrich bowed out and went on to make Martin Roumagnac with Georges Lacombe instead -- not the most felicitous of choices. The other major distinction of Les Portes de la Nuit is the score by Joseph Kosma, which introduced his song "Les Feuilles Mortes," better known in the States as "Autumn Leaves," with lyrics by Johnny Mercer replacing the original ones by Jacques Prévert.

Les Visiteurs du Soir (Marcel Carné, 1942)

Marie Déa and Alain Cuny in Les Visiteurs du Soir

Dominique: Arletty
Gilles: Alain Cuny 
Anne: Marie Déa 
Baron Hugues: Fernand Ledoux 
Renaud: Marcel Herrand 
The Devil: Jules Berry

Director: Marcel Carné 
Screenplay: Jacques Prévert, Pierre Laroche 
Cinematography: Roger Hubert
Production design: Alexandre Trauner
Film editing: Henri Rust
Music: Joseph Kosma, Maurice Thiriet

Alexandre Trauner's sets and costumes for Marcel Carné's Les Visiteurs du Soir were based on the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, although I was more reminded of the work of early 20th century illustrators like Walter Crane, N.C. Wyeth, and Maxfield Parrish, who were also influenced by that celebrated 15th-century illuminated manuscript. Trauner was not credited for his work on the film however. He was a Jew in occupied France, and the credit went to a "front," Georges Wakhévitch, just as, little more than a decade later, blacklisted Americans working in Hollywood were forced to hide behind their own fronts. The story of the making of Les Visiteurs du Soir is almost as interesting as the film itself.Not only was some of the behind-the-scenes work done sub rosa, to fool the Nazis and their collaborators, even the film's attempts to display luxury were thwarted by real-life conditions. Although the film was given a generous budget, the costuming was hindered by a shortage of suitable fabric, and in the banquet scenes the food had to be treated with an unpleasant substance to keep the extras and the crew from gobbling it down between takes. Even so, because the film deals with the manipulations of emissaries from the devil to the court of a French nobleman, it was taken to be a kind of allegory of the German invasion of France, and the devil played by Jules Berry to be a satirical representation of Adolf Hitler. The director and the screenwriters denied that was their intent.The film was a big critical and commercial hit in a France starved for movies -- films made in America and Britain were banned -- and while it's not on a par with Carné's 1945 masterpiece Children of Paradise, it remains a classic. Arletty is superbly seductive as Dominique, although it's doubtful that anyone would ever mistake her for the boy she pretends to be for part of the film. Trouser roles are always a problematic convention, but Arletty's "boy" looks to be in his 40s, which she was. As her fellow emissary, Alain Cuny is suitably dashing, and while Marie Déa is not quite the peerless beauty the screenplay wants her to be, the doomed love affair of Anne and Gilles gives an otherwise rather chilly film some warmth. But the film is stolen by Jules Berry as the devil, camping it up amusingly, at one point literally playing with fire. As a fantasy film, Les Visiteurs du Soir doesn't have the consummate style of Jean Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast (1946), to which it is sometimes compared, but its moods are darker and its story may be deeper. 

Hôtel du Nord (Marcel Carné, 1938)

Bernard Blier and Arletty in Hõtel du Nord

Raymonde: Arletty
Edmond: Louis Jouvet
Renée: Annabella
Pierre: Jean-Pierre Aumont
Louise Lecouvreur: Jane Marken
Emile Lecouvreur: André Brunot
Maltaverne: René Bergeron
Ginette: Paulette Dubost
Adrien: François Périer
Kenel: Andrex
Nazarède: Henri Bosc
The Surgeon: Marcel André
Prosper: Bernard Blier
Munar: Jacques Louvigny
The Commissioner: Armand Lurville
The Nurse: Génia Vaury

Director: Marcel Carné
Screenplay: Henri Jeanson, Jean Aurenche
Based on a novel by Eugène Dabit
Cinematography: Louis Née, Armand Thirard
Production design: Alexandre Trauner
Film editing: Marthe Gottié, René Le Hénaff
Music: Maurice Jaubert

I had seen Arletty in a movie only once before, as the fascinating, enigmatic Garance in Marcel Carné's great Children of Paradise (1945), so I was completely unprepared for her performance as the raucous streetwalker Raymonde in Hôtel du Nord. Raymonde shares a room in the hotel with Edmond, a photographer who is hiding out from his old cronies in the Parisian underworld. The film begins with a traveling shot along the canal that flanks the hotel, where we first see a young pair of lovers, Pierre and Renée, walking arm in arm. Inside the hotel, the residents are celebrating the first communion of the daughter of Maltaverne, a policeman who lives at the hotel. (It's a diverse household.) Pierre and Renée enter and request a room for the night, but instead of making love, they have decided on a suicide pact: He will shoot her, then kill himself. He holds up the first part of the bargain, but then chickens out. Edmond, who has been in his darkroom, hears the shot and breaks down the door, finding Renée apparently dead and Pierre cowering indecisively. Taking the gun from Pierre, Edmond urges him to flee. (The gun becomes a Chekhov's gun when Edmond first tosses it away and then recovers it and stashes it in a drawer.) Renée recovers from the gunshot, and Pierre, torn with guilt, turns himself into the police as an attempted murderer and is sent to prison. After she recuperates, Renée returns to the hotel to collect her things, and is offered a job there by Madame Lecouvreur, the wife of the proprietor. And so the story of the suicidal lovers begins to intertwine with that of Edmond and Raymonde. It's all neatly done, with a great deal of atmosphere (a word that Raymonde will give a particular spin to), much of it created by Alexandre Trauner's set, a re-creation in the studios at Billancourt of the actual hotel and the Canal St. Martin.  The film's melodrama is alleviated by the ensemble work and the performances of Jouvet, who can switch from menacing to vulnerable in an instant, and Arletty, who makes the tough, worldly wise Raymonde often very funny. The film concludes with Carné's skillful staging of an elaborate Bastille Day sequence that anticipates the crowd scenes in Children of Paradise.