Remorques (1941) - film review

André Laurent is the captain of a salvage boat and lives in the Brittany port of Brest with his wife Yvonne.  Concealing a serious illness, Yvonne pleads with her husband to give up his hazardous job and start a new life with her in another town, but, loyal to his employees, André refuses.  One night, he is called to rescue a merchant ship in distress.  The captain of the distressed ship has no intention of paying André for the rescue and absconds once the ship has been towed to safety, leaving behind his wife Catherine.  Suspecting that his marriage is crumbling, André finds himself attracted towards Catherine...

Jean Grémillon’s intense, almost morbid, preoccupation with amour fou attains its darkest and most potent expression in Remorques, a hauntingly evocative work in which the overwhelming power of a passionate love affair is contrasted with another great force of nature, a violent sea storm raging off the coast of Brittany.  The tow-rope which allows a rescue boat to save another ship from being swallowed by the waves  at the start of the film provides an apt metaphor for the romantic drama that ensues, with salvage boat captain Jean Gabin saved from a loveless marriage and tugged to happier shores by femme fatale Michèle Morgan - or so it seems.  The fact that the aforementioned tow-rope breaks, allowing the rescued ship to go sailing off into the sunset without so much as a merci hints at what fate has in store for the star-crossed lovers as they nonchalantly slip their moorings and dip their toes in the troubled waters of desire.

The film is based loosely on a novel of the same title by the acclaimed French writer Roger Vercel, whose previous novel Capitaine Conan (winner of the Prix Concourt in 1934) would later be adapted for cinema by Bertrand Tavernier.  Charles Spaak’s original screenplay for the film was rejected by Grémillon’s bosses at UFA, who hired André Cayatte to draft a rewrite.  This second version of the script was ill-received by both Grémillon and his lead actor Jean Gabin, who insisted that it be rewritten by Jacques Prévert, to put much more emphasis on the central love affair.  Prévert’s poetic realist style was perfectly aligned with Grémillon’s conception of the film and together they succeeded in crafting one of French cinema’s most hauntingly poetic visualisations of a will-o’-the-wisp love affair.   

Grémillon’s one stroke of good fortune on this film was his casting.  Jean Gabin was the biggest box office draw in French cinema at the time and had given the director his first commercial success with Gueule d’amour (1937).  Gabin personified the kind of working class hero that features prominently in Grémillon’s films and is particularly well-suited to play the incorruptible yet emotionally vulnerable male lead in Remorques.  Here Gabin is partnered with rising star Michèle Morgan, with whom he had already formed a memorable couple, first in Marcel Carné’s Le Quai des brumes (1938), and then in Maurice Gleize’s Le Récif de corail (1938).  Morgan’s almost ethereal presence, sensual yet also strangely distant, contrasts perfectly with Gabin’s solidity and ordinariness - together they formed one of French cinema’s most successful screen partnerships, although they would only appear together in one further films: La Minute de vérité (1952).  For the other main female role, Grémillon selected Madeleine Renaud, an actress who represented for him Gabin’s female counterpart, a woman securely anchored in the reality of her working class milieu.  Grémillon would later give Renaud her greatest role in his pro-resistance, pro-feminist masterpiece Le Ciel est à vous (1944).

Grémillon’s ambitions for the film were somewhat compromised by events behind his control.  He had originally envisaged shooting most of the film on location in Brittany, including the dramatic storm sea scenes.  When the latter proved to be impracticable to realise without drowning his camera operator, he had no option but to record them, along with the interior scenes, at UFA’s Billancourt studios in Paris.  Despite an impressively constructed set, Grémillon failed to achieve the extreme realism that he sought and, by today’s standards, some of the shots are laughably unconvincing.  The biggest setback however was the outbreak of WWII in September 1939, which brought an immediate end to the studio shoot.  Filming resumed briefly in May the following year, but was again suspended when France capitulated to Nazi Germany in June 1940.   Grémillon was able to complete the film during the summer of 1941, allowing it to be released in November 1941, by which time both of its stars (Gabin and Morgan) had taken up temporary residence in Hollywood.  Despite its troubled production, Remorques proved to be a massively popular film and secured Grémillon’s place as one of France’s leading filmmakers during its darkest years.

©James Travers 2002-2011


Remorques is a fascinating film whichever way you look at it.  Like all good movies, it begins with the screenplay and here we have a collaboration between two of the all-time greats of French cinema, Jacques Prévert and Charles Spaak, plus a contribution from director-in-waiting André Cayatte.  On paper, it seemed as if director Jean Grémillon’s luck was about to change for the better.  

On an unofficial blacklist since the early thirties, Grémillon had worked in both Spain and Berlin. Two of his earlier titles - Gueule d’amour and L’Etrange Monsieur Victor - though excellent, were nevertheless box office failures.  Finally back in France with a great script and an equally great cast (Jean Gabin, Michèle Morgan and Madeleine Renaud, Grémillon’s favourite actress), just about the only thing that could go wrong did and shooting was interrupted by the outbreak of war.  The film was only completed in 1941, after which Gabin and Morgan left France for Hollywood.  

Gabin (surprise, surprise) plays yet another tragic protagonist, something of a signature role for him at this time.  As the skipper of a tugboat (remorques translates as tugboat) he has to cope with not only a terminally ill wife (Renaud) but also his feelings for Morgan, whom he meets symbolically during a storm - the film was actually released outside France as Stormy Waters.  Despite the problems and the delayed release, Remorques did in fact kick-start Grémillon’s career and paved the way for his great triumph of the forties, Le Ciel est à vous, again with Renaud.  This is a fine film and should not be missed.

© Leon Nock (London, England) 2010 

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