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Les Portes de la nuit
1946 Drama / Romance
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Summary
February 1945. In the Paris underground, a manual worker, Jean Diego, meets a tramp
who introduces himself as Fate. The tramp foretells that the worker will fall in
love with a beautiful woman and that his next few hours will be very dramatic. To
Jean’s incredulity the prophecy begins to come true when he meets Malou, a young
woman fleeing from an unhappy marriage. Malou’s brother Guy is also warned
by the same mysterious tramp that he is destined for an unhappy and imminent death. Ignoring
the warning, Guy accosts Malou’s husband Georges and reveals that Malou has fallen
in love with Jean. Suspecting that Jean may be armed, Georges reluctantly accepts
the gun that Guy offers him...
Review
Les Portes de la nuit marked the beginning of
a dramatic decline in the fortunes of its director Marcel Carné. Prior to
and during World War II, Carné was one of the most respected and popular directors
of his generation in France, responsible for such uncontested masterpieces as
Hôtel du Nord (1938) and
Les Enfants du paradis (1945). His
distinctive noirish cinematic style, termed poetic
realism, was entirely appropriate for the gloomy latter years of the 1930s and
early 1940s. With Les Portes de la nuit,
Carné persevered with this tried and trusted formula but soon discovered the public
mood was not with him. In the aftermath of a devastating and humiliating war, the
poetic realist style reflected a dark pessimistic view of life which most French people
found hard to stomach.
Another factor which may account for the commercial failure of the film is its lack of a strong lead actor and actress. Originally, Carné had slated Jean Gabin and his real-life lover Marlene Dietrich to play the principal roles in the film. When the couple decide instead to take the lead in Georges Lacombe’s equally ill-fated Martin Roumagnac (1946), Carné had to re-cast. Inexplicably, he chose an unknown young actor, Yves Montand, to play the leading male role, with a comparatively unknown actress Nathalie Nattier opposite him. Although Yves Montand went on to become a major star in France, as both an actor and a singer, he is miscast in this film, and he fails to bring the emotional force needed to give the drama any real impact. Instead, the film is dominated by the presence of its excellent supporting cast, notably Jean Vilar (who is magnificent as the mysterious fortune-telling tramp), with pleasing contributions from Pierre Brasseur and Serge Reggiani. Although some sequences in this film are extraordinarily beautiful and poetic, it lacks the cohesion and force of Carné’s earlier collaborations with his screenwriter, Jacques Prévert. Perhaps they were losing interest in the poetic realist approach, or maybe they found it hard to apply to a realistic contemporary setting after their previous historical outings (Les Visiteurs du soir and Les Enfants du paradis). Whatever the reason, Les Portes de la nuit is the least successful and least rewarding of the films from the Carné-Prévert stable. Sadly, it was also to be the last. The artistic duo planned to work together again on another film, Fleur de l'âge, but the cancellation of this film put a definitive end to their partnership. Poetic realism was dead. © James Travers 2000
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