Quai des Brumes (12) |Home Ents Review

The proto-noir French classic with cool, fatalistic characters, oodles of mood and a killer understated climax is back. I recommend a watch, not least because this new 4K restoration makes the film look even foggier than ever before!

Army deserter Jean (Gabin) hitchhikes to Le Havre, looking for a boat to somewhere the cops can’t reach him. He picks up a stray dog on the outskirts of town, then holes up in a squatter’s shack that’s being run as a bar, peopled by assorted desperate aesthetes and alcoholics. Here he meets a young woman, Nelly (Morgan), who is wearing a beret and a transparent raincoat. 

Jean and Nelly swap cool one liners. He saves her from the local hood (Brasseur). He rescues her from her evil guardian (Simon). Eventually, they get a room at a dockside hotel. But what will the next day bring? Can they really be in love? Will it last? 

Quai des Brumes is the link between the proletarian end of French poetic realism (think L’Atalante or Boudu Saved from Drowning, both featuring the looming, threatening figure of Michel Simon) and film noir of the 1940s. 

We have the doomed characters, the one liners that are here more concrete than poetic, slick streets that reflect light nicely when no fog is in the way. Perhaps more than most films noirs, this feels fatalistic and fixed in its place of drama: some characters with no substantial back stories holed up in a port town, waiting for a ship to sail or something else to happen. 

Gabin is terse and self-contained. Morgan is young, intense and obviously suffering after abuse. Both the villains are verbose hysterics – and rather good at it. The supporting actors tend to be in comic mode and that is exactly what is required to counter the brilliant gloom. 

Directed by Marcel Carné and written by poet Jacques Prévert, the film captures the melancholy and fatalism of pre-war France, with luminous performances and shadow-soaked cinematography by Eugène Schüfftan. Michèle Morgan’s transparent raincoat and beret – widely believed to reflect CHANEL’s aesthetic – remain one of cinema’s most enduring visual icons.

I was bowled over by the suddenness of the climax and its series of heartbreaking, abrupt shots that tie the story up without allowing time for sentimentality. The viewer’s emotions are only released from the film’s vise-like control as the credits roll. 

Quai des Brumes is out in a new 4K restoration on Blu-ray and DVD on 13 October 2025 from Studiocanal Vintage World Cinema