Gates of the Night

Prévert's script has no interest, Yves Montand and Nathalie Nattier play badly, the character of destiny is ridiculous. But the sets, the photography, some superb shots of Paris just after the war (Montmartre, the rotunda, the Bassin de la Villette, Jaurès, at the very beginning of the film), the songs of Kosma and Prévert, a certain atmosphere worth the detour.

Winter in Paris, 1944. The occupying Germans have fled, Vichy disbanded but the war still rages on and shortages exist. Jean Diego (Yves Montand) exits at the Barbes Rochechouart metro station to deliver bad news to the wife of a friend. It turns out the news is erroneous, however and the wake turns into a celebration as Diego and the family go out to dinner where he finds himself entranced by a woman (Natalie Nathier) he views from the window of the restaurant. She wants out of her marriage and the pair meet later by coincidence. Meanwhile a jealous husband (Pierre Brasseur) searches for her.

Released in 1946, wounds still fresh from the occupation Gates of the Night is more than just a tragic romance but also a recent reminder of the collaboration and betrayal of fellow Frenchman during that period as well as those who benefited from the calamity. Director Marcel Carne shows no sympathy for these exploiters as they attempt to re-write their recent history. Pierre Brasseur, Serge Reggiani and especially Saturnin Fabre convey their complicity denial with unctuous conviction.

Carne and screenwriter add a touch of fantasy with a homeless character believing he is destiny in human form and while it rattles the verismo of the picture it provides additional ambiguity and interest.

Shot in typical graceful Carne style, (with cinematographer, Phillipe Agostini providing some stunning night canvases) the romance (with its "Autmn Leaves" background music) tends to be rather mawkish. Carne also chooses to jump from the film's climactic moment to another almost as pressing only to distract from both.

Romance removed Gates of Night must have engendered a good deal of emotion and soul searching to a French audience and the very recent memory of its occupation.

Making my way through the films of Marcel Carné I come at last to this, which, after just watching Les Enfants du Paradis, can't help but feel somewhat lesser, and indeed the film does feel like less than the sum of its parts. There's some wonderful stretches but for it to work it needed to pull all of the strands of story together in a satisfying way by the end, and it doesn't, it just misses the mark. The pacing also drags in parts, particularly towards the end.

As often with foreign language films from the past, the English subtitles are poorly translated and unclear, making the point and subtext of certain passages hard to follow.

The fabric of the film is glorious, though, with a magical mood and ravishing photography. The premise of fated lovers is very nicely evoked, if not satisfactorily executed. Still very worth checking out though.

This started out as a ballet choreographed by Roland Petit called Le Rendez-vous, with a libretto by Prevert and music by Kosma. This ballet was one of Petit's finest works and was in fact given a new production in Paris only last month (March 2013). Carne saw the possibilities in the story and had Prevert write the screenplay. No expense was spared, we are told, to recreate the world of Barbes-Rochechouart, with the replica of the Metro station built on set. It is fashionable with some people to dismiss this film because Gabin and Dietrich aren't in it, or for some other reason having to do with politics, but I found it a wonderful experience. My only complaint is with Vilar's character, which was transferred from the ballet apparently, and is very tiresome indeed. His windy philosophizing only diminishes the enjoyment I felt in the story.

The actors do a tremendous job. Saturnin Fabre as the father of Malou and Guy, with his fake expressions of affection for his long-lost daughter--she had spent some years singing in New York--and his reluctance to admit to his collaboration with the Germans gives a strong performance. Raymond Bussieres as the train driver is a wonderful foil for Montand. Serge Reggiani as Guy, the militia member who denounced Bussieres to the Gestapo is creepy and cynical. He would have shot his father if the latter had tried to prevent him from escaping. Pierre Brasseur again shows us why he was one of the greatest actors in France: his businessman with the shady dealings that horrify his wife is very well crafted, given the small number of lines he has.

Finally Montand and Nattier are not replacements for Gabin and Dietrich, they are better because younger and much less prone to give actorish performances. You can see Montand working out how to play a scene. His responses are lively and right. Nattier looks great--every bit as glamorous as Dietrich, and she can sing too. Her scene with Fabre sizzles with anger and disappointment.

This movie is so much better than the limp confections that followed: La Marie du port, Therese Raquin, Le pays d'ou je viens, Les tricheurs and others. Carne was still fairly young and hadn't started to phone the work in.

This French classic film, LES PORTES DE LA NUIT, is known in English as GATES OF THE NIGHT and sometimes as THE DOORS OF THE NIGHT (which is the translation of the title given in the new subtitles). The film has recently been reissued in France in a remastered form on DVD and Blu-Ray by Pathé, along with English subtitles and some extras. It can easily be ordered from French Amazon. This film is a masterpiece of world cinema, but I had never seen it before. It is entirely set in Paris on one night in July 1945. It is written by Jacques Prévert, and is possibly the most surrealistic of all the films he wrote. He intentionally has written a complex interweaving story involving many characters where the veil between this world and the next can be pierced, and where apparent 'coincidence' reigns supreme, in a heightened form, as a kind of divine synchronicity operating as Fate. Just so that we do not fail to understand, Prévert has written into the script a mysterious vagabond (called in the credits 'le clochard', i.e. 'the vagabond') who is a genuine visitor from the other world, disguised as a beggar. This strange innovation in cinema technique has precedents from Greek and Latin antiquity, of which Prévert was certainly well aware, for in those cultures the common people superstitiously believed that the gods sometimes came to earth disguised as vagabonds and came knocking at the door asking for shelter. One always had to give every vagabond his basic necessities of food and a place to sleep, for the gods were spying on us to see if we kept to the laws of hospitality, and if we dared to turn away a vagabond with contempt, a divine wrath might destroy us in retribution. Indeed, the most famous figure in ancient Greek literature who disguised himself as a vagabond was Homer's hero Odysseus (known in Latin as Ulysses), and although not a god, he was later worshipped as a demi-god on his home island of Ithaca, and I was present when some Greek archaeologists were excavating the remains of the ancient Odysseion, which was his shrine there. These visitations by supernatural or semi-supernatural beings haunted the ancient Greeks, and similar ideas were current in a debased form in Ireland with the elves, in England with the fairies and gnomes, and in Norway with the trolls. For most of human history, 'we were being watched' by the invisible powers. As it says in the American Christmas song about Santa Claus: 'he knows when you are sleeping, he knows when you awake, he knows if you are bad or good, so be good for goodness' sake'. And here in this film the eyes of Fate are upon all the characters in the form of a personage of mysterious mien. He is brilliantly played by a man who had never acted in a film before, Jean Vilar. He is the actual star of the film, and his gaze is perfect and what he says is just as perfect. When people demand to know who he is, he says 'Le Destin' (Destiny, Fortune, or Fate). He keeps trying to warn people of their impending fates, but they never listen to him, and he says to himself more than once: 'They are all the same, they never listen.' This story device actually works, and that is because the film is directed by the genius Marcel Carné. He and Prévert made several famous films together, in what has become known as the 'poetic realism' style. They include one of the greatest films of all time, LES ENFANTS DU PARADIS (1945), as well as JENNY (1936), LE QUAI DES BRUMES (1938), LE JOUR SE LEVE (1939), and LES VISITEURS DU SOIR (1942). This film is the most daring of them all, in having a supernatural character. It was also the last collaboration of the two men. One of the stars of this film is Yves Montand, aged 25, in his second credited film. He delivers a truly superb performance, including many lines of dialogue which a lesser actor could not have pulled off, because they bordered on the incredible. The entire cast are brilliant, the shots, framing, mood, atmosphere and editing are sheer perfection. The cinematography of Philippe Agostini is inspired. He worked with Carné once before, on LE JOUR SE LEVE (1939). The haunting music for this film was composed by the Hungarian Joseph Kosma (real name Kozma). It is played on the harmonica by Jean Vilar, and sung by Nathalie Nattier as well. In French, its lyrics were written by Prévert, and the song is entitled 'Les Feuilles Mortes'. But in English, with lyrics by Johnny Mercer, this film became the famous song 'Autumn Leaves', a number one hit song in America, which must have been recorded either with or without a voice a thousand times over the years and still features in muzak everywhere, and even gave its name to a subsequent Hollywood film with Joan Crawford in 1956. Kosma also wrote the music for two other Carné films, as well as several other famous French classics. The story of this film is multiple, but all is entwined. It is impossible in a brief space to summarize it. There are many supernatural elements linking all the characters together in a single night. Some meet their doom, others are left to sorrow perpetually. Tragedy reigns in this close-up view of the human condition. The hopes, the joys, the regrets, the melancholy, the delights, the disappointments, they are all there. And there are children and young people joyously romping around amidst it all. There is young love, there is old love, there is impossible love. This film is complex, just like Life. It is as divine as its mysterious vagabond. And we are the privileged witnesses of it all.