Le quai des brumes

Le quai des brumes

Directed by Marcel Carné

France, 1938

Cornerhouse, 23 September 2012

As I left the cinema, a question: has anyone ever written a book about the dog in French film?

There is an urgent need for such a study, and I’d suggest that any prospective scholar should start by considering Carné’s classic.

Jean Gabin’s soldier saves a dog’s life by forcing a truck to swerve.  Later, a dog – the same one, you’d bet your life on it – follows him about.  He can’t seem to get rid of it: the dog is a constant companion, maybe even a protector.  Then there falls a day when the dog is kept on a leash indoors, tied up as Gabin goes on an urgent mission.  It is a fateful day.

It is a very French film, what with lots of lines about love and life, art and human nature, and many neat touches.  Such as how when Zabel – a subtle villain and music lover – is killed, Bach is playing on the radio.

Some of the sentiments you’ll find in Aki Kaurismäki’s Le Havre and, from what I remember, there’s a dog in that film too.  It follows the immigrant boy about.  Above all, though, there are the acts of unexpected kindness and hospitality; they play a significant role in both films.

Le quai des brumes is showing again on Wednesday as part of the Matinee Classics season, further details are here.

Le Havre

Le Havre

Directed by Aki Kaurismaki

Finland, 2011

Cornerhouse, 7 April 2012

It is a magical or maybe more precisely a magic realist film.

Even though set in modern France and featuring topics of current concern (people trafficking, illegal immigration) it is, in essence, a folk tale such as Italo Calvino or Martin Buber might have collected.

A man’s wife is diagnosed with cancer and while we know it is terminal and fatal, he believes it’s benign.  He is wholly oblivious to the seriousness of her condition and therefore innocent.  His intentions are innocent and pure, that is to say without ulterior motive, when he decides to help an immigrant boy who’s on the run from the police.

The logic of the film, though, is that by doing all he can to arrange passage for one foreign body (the boy), another foreign body (the cancer afflicting his wife) is encouraged on its way.  It lets her well alone.

There’s a Hasidic story in one of Buber’s collections which has the same kind of logic; Norman Mailer quotes it in an article he wrote for Village Voice in the ‘60s.

Anyway, Le Havre is a wonderful film withal.  It boasts a bounty of beautiful performances, notably from Jean-Pierre Darroussin as a mock-stern police inspector whose heart is in the right place.