Les Portes de la Nuit **** (1946, Pierre Brasseur, Yves Montand, Nathalie Nattier, Serge Reggiani) – Classic Movie Review 5268

Marcel Carné’s gorgeously atmospheric 1946 French semi-classic film tells a typically doomed love story and is set in the nocturnal, winter Paris of the immediate post-war period.

Yves Montand and Raymond Bussières play buddies who re-encounter in Paris after the Liberation of France by the Allies. A tramp predicts that Montand will meet a stunning woman, and that night he meets Nathalie Nattier, finding out that her brother betrayed Bussières to the Nazis.

The Barbès-Rochechouart métro station in Paris, a location of exterior shooting.

Production designer Alexandre Trauner’s superb sets and the poetic pessimism of Jacques Prévert’s screenplay are extremely beguiling. Prévert wrote the scenario and dialogue based on his ballet Le Rendez-vous.

It is unfortunate that Yves Montand and Nathalie Nattier, as the Resistance hero and the black-marketeer, do not quite fully convince in roles that were originally written for Jean Gabin and Marlene Dietrich. But, otherwise, this is a fine film, a worthy successor to Carné’s earlier classics.

It also stars Pierre Brasseur, Serge Reggiani, Jean Vilar, Saturnin Fabre, Julien Carette and Sylvie Bataille.

Also in the cast are Mady Berry, Christian Simon, Dany Robin, René Blancard, Gabrielle Fontan, Fabien Loris, Jane Marken and Jean Maxime.

Unfortunately also, the film’s mood of pre-war-style angst was firmly rejected by the post-war movie-going public who were in a changed mood in 1946, and this film finished Carné’s internationally renowned partnership with Prévert.

It is also known as Gates of the Night.

See also Hotel du Nord (1938), Le quai des brumes (1938), Le Jour se Leve (1939), Les Visiteurs du Soir (1942) and Les enfants du paradis (1945).

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 5268

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