Gates of the Night (“Les portes de la nuit”)
Directed by Marcel Carné
Written by Jacques Prévert
1946/France
Société Nouvelle Pathé Cinéma
First viewing/Hulu Plus
[box] Every man gotta right to decide his own destiny. — Bob Marley[/box]
Carné returns to the dark side in his follow up to Children of Paradise. As a film noir this is just odd. We do get to witness Yves Montand’s film debut, however, and that is a good thing.
The action takes place on one night in Paris after the liberation of the city but before the end of WWII. We are introduced first to a street musician whose role will be to play “Autumn Leaves” at key points and to represent Destiny. The coincidences will flow fast and furious.
Jean Diego (Montand) arrives at a Paris tenement to tell the lady of the Lécuyer household that his friend, her husband, was killed in a reprisal on resistance workers. It turns out that Raymond is alive and back at work after some torture. At the same time we meet the Lecuyer’s grasping neighbor, whose son Guy is off being a “war hero”, and Monsieur Quinquina (Carrette) and his brood of 15 children.
Jean and his friends go to dinner at a nearby cafe to celebrate. There, Destiny tells Jean he will meet a beautiful woman, predicts the drowning death of an inebriated gypsy, and plays “Autumn Leaves”. Jean finally remembers that he heard the song once in 1939 while he was in San Francisco’s Chinatown.
Sure enough, we are introduced to the beautiful Malou and her husband, a war profiteer (Pierre Brasseur). Malou has apparently been attempting to leave her possessive spouse for some time. She breaks free and returns to her childhood home. Guess what? Yes, she is the neighbor’s long lost daughter! Jean and she are linked by the song she sang on the radio and by some overlapping time on Easter Island. They fall in love.
Then the “war hero” comes home. I won’t spoil this further but the coincidences just don’t stop coming. Despite Destiny’s many warnings to all concerned, tragedy is inevitable.
Carne and Prevert probably intended a grand allegory on post-War retribution on collaborators but it just felt very forced to me. One of the problems is that the realism of the style does not fit the abstraction of the concept. No denying that there are some very beautiful shots in the film, though.
Yves Montand got his big break when Jean Gabin and Marlene Dietrich, who were to have starred, pulled out of the picture.
Clip – no subtitles but a chance to see a very young Yves Montand and listen to him sing a phrase or two of “Autumn Leaves”
