Récompenses
Prix Louis-Delluc 1939
Grand Prix national du cinéma français 1939
Prix Méliès de l'Académie du film -ex æquo avec La Bête humaine de Jean Renoir-(également avec Jean Gabin)
Lion d'or (pour la mise en scène) à la Mostra de Venise 1938
*
-
*
Thirty Years Ahead of Its Time
*
The version I watched is the one released in 2004 on Criterion. This comes with a 30-page booklet with an essay by Luc Sante and an excerpt from Marcel Carne's autobiography. The DVD has a very clear picture and crisp sound. I found the story quite interesting and was impressed by each the actors. There is one scene which makes use of classical music during a moment of violence. It made me think of a movie made much later, Stanley Kubrick's A CLOCKWORK ORANGE.
*
PORT OF SHADOWS is about degrees of violence. The adolescent thugs who terrorize the little port city of Le Havre have no idea of what is hidden in the lives of the two protagonists: A soldier who has deserted the army after going through something unspeakable in Tonkin and the urbane middle-aged man who has had enough of losing. I think the inevitability of the events in this movie bothers many people who have reviewed it on this database. It doesn't bother me.
Was the above review useful to you?
8 out of 9 people found the following review useful:
Engaging, provoking theatre
Author: Polaris_DiB from United States
17 September 2007
*
Interesting what a contrast this movie makes to Carne's "The Children of Paradise". The two are almost complete opposites where mise-en-scene is concerned, and yet more interesting is that they both show a filmmaker with a craft of form and expression that rises beyond most other filmmakers, including his contemporaries."Port of Shadows" is about a French army deserter (Jean Gabin, wonderful as usual) who attempts to flee the nation in order to finally begin a life away from the bad luck that's always held him. He appears at a small port town, immediately falls in love, and sets off a chain of events that show an inherent fatalism with a sense of humor, tragedy, and substance.
This movie has one of those scripts that's very appealing in the way that it sends characters wandering through the mists, and yet somehow everything comes together and ties up all loose ends by the end. Adding to it the moody, brooding cinematography filled with fog and smoke, and one can't help but immerse oneself gladly into a different world. Also, Carne adds a sense of theatricality and the Carnivalesque that even Fellini couldn't compare to.This is definitely a film that well deserves being called "a classic of French cinema." --
PolarisDiB
