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| Jean
Gabin, Michel Simon, Michèle Morgan, Pierre Brasseur |
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Anamorphic
widescreen |
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Dolby Digital
5.1 |
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DTS |
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Trailer(s) |
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Featurette(s) |
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Documentary |
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Audio commentary
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Deleted scenes
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Concept art
/ storyboards |
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Multi-angle
feature |
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Jean (Jean Gabin): Using a gun
looks easy. Like shooting wooden ducks at a fair. You shoot, and
then some guy screams.
He holds his stomach and makes a face like a kid with a bellyache.
His hands turn red, and then he drops. You're left standing there.
You don't understand a thing. Like everything around you has disappeared.
A deserter finds true love in the
harbours of Le Havre, but circumstances lead them to tragedy.
 It's
hard to go wrong with any French film from the late 1930s, especially
one that stars cinema icon Jean Gabin and was produced by the team
that would go on to make Children of Paradise. After all,
France's Golden Age of cinema offers a standard of excellence equal
to, if not greater than that of Hollywood around the same period.
But although the ingredients would appear to be right, from the
cast and crew to the doomed love affair that is its subject matter, Port
of Shadows is only occasionally as good as we would want it
to be. One element that works against the film is the contrast
between its gorgeously foggy location scenes (shot in impressionistic
chiaroscuro, but sadly few and far between) with the weirdly underpopulated
studio-bound sets, which are jarringly sharp and brightly lit in
comparison. But these relatively minor quibbles aside, there is
enough to enjoy here to make it an easy recommend for any movie
buff, especially those with a penchant for moody Gallic romances. |
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A French DVD exists, but without
English subtitles. The Criterion Collection release of this
film served as the basis for this review.
The fullscreen
image is framed at its original aspect ratio of approx. 1.33:1. The
source print quality varies greatly, often within a single
scene, during which it can go from amazingly sharp to what
looks like beat-up, bleached-out 16mm footage. We will take
it as a given that these are the best surviving elements
for this nearly 70-year-old film, and be grateful that at
least the film is still complete.
The mono sound
mix, rendered in Dolby Digital 1.0, is in relatively good
shape. It's tinny at times and has low fidelity as one would
expect from such an old film. But the dialogues are clearly
intelligible and there are no major distractions on this
solid soundtrack.
 In
addition to the original French theatrical trailer,
the disc features a nice image gallery featuring
original movie posters and lots of stills from the film — behind-the-scenes
shots, portraits of the actors, and photos of crew members.
The only other extra is a handsomely designed 32-page booklet,
which includes
a set of gorgeous stills from the film, an analysis of the film by
Luc Sante, and an excerpt from the director's autobiography
detailing the film's production.
Dan
Hassler-Forest
Reviewed:
October 18, 2004
Click
here for IMDB info on Port
of Shadows.
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to return to the front page.
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