- I was pleasantly surprised to discover that Marcel Carné's Port of Shadows is one of the earliest clear antecedents of the film noir style. Sure, American gangster films had been mixing tragedy and crime for a while, just as German expressionism had been dimming the lights and canting the angles, but rarely did you see most of the ingredients get mixed in the correct proportions prior to the 1940's. With its foggy nightscapes, oddball villains, and disillusioned anti-heroes, Port of Shadows is very nearly noir.
- The story follows a disgruntled former soldier named Jean (Jean Gabin), whom we gather deserted the French army when he grew tired of the pointless killing. With little more than the army coat on his back and a stray dog in tow, Jean makes his way to an out-of-the-way oasis run by a mostly honest man named Panama (Édouard Delmont). There, he hopes to gain passage out of the country, but things quickly get complicated when a cowardly crook named Lucien (Pierre Brasseur) tries to kill the bearded mastermind Zabel (Michel Simon) just outside the bar. Did I mention that Zabel's goddaughter, a mysterious raincoated woman named Nelly (Michèle Morgan), was hiding inside the bar at the same time? If that's not a tangled noir setup, I don't know what is.
- But plots aside, the real attractions in Port of Shadows are its characters and settings. Jean is as disheartened a soldier as you could imagine existing prior to the outbreak of the Second World War, and Nelly is every bit his perfect female counterpart, jaded by her mistreatment at the hands of several different villains. Zabel and Lucien are interesting, too, as a set of equally deadly men in possession of very dissimilar levels of refinement and confidence. But the real star of the film may be the locations. Carné and the immensely gifted cinematographer Eugen Schüfftan (known best for his work on Metropolis and The Hustler), magically transform the port town of Le Havre into such a foggy, desolate place that even a carnival can't lift the film's spirits. It's a place where people intentionally walk out into the ocean, never to return. In other words, as good a location as any to serve as one of the birthplaces of film noir.
