Le Quai des brumes

On the eve of World War II, Jean – a deserting soldier – goes to Le Havre in the hope of leaving the country. He finds refuge in a port-house and meets Nelly, a beautiful young woman in the clutches of a miserable guardian. Emblem of poetic realism, "barometer of the storm to come" said Carné, Le Quai des Brumes is the hangout of lost dogs, vagrants, and criminals. The dialogues have the color of gloomy weather, and the language of Prévert, strange and familiar, speaks the essentials, striking with the simplest of words. Rarely has the loneliness of beings been translated with so much heart.