Adding even more thickness to the atmosphere of Marcel Carné’s brilliant works of poetic realism in the late 1930’s (Port of Shadows, 1938; Hotel du Nord, 1938; Le Jour Se Leve, 1939), French director Christian Jaque creates a kind of storybook noir in Voyage sans espoir (US: Voyage Without Hope) that is both brutal and beautiful in its steady crawl toward tragedy. With omnipresent fog, mist and shadows, crashing waves and stone towers, sharp-angled row houses tilting in asymmetrical directions, off-kilter camera angles and the striped light of Venetian blinds, the expressionism runs deep throughout the film, perhaps as smothering as the Nazi presence occupying France at the time. Simone Renant plays Marie-Ange, a nightclub performer caught between two men: her escape convict boyfriend Pierre Gohelle (Paul Bernard), who desperately needs money to pay off the crew of ship captain Philippe Dejanin (Lucien Coëdel) so they’ll take him to Argentina, and a young, wealthy patsy named Alain Ginestier (Jean Marais) whom Gohelle asks her to seduce so she can steal his money but with whom she finds herself falling in love. Betrayal, guilt, and murder ensue, leading to a pathos-packed climax in the train station. Voyage Without Hope is a remake of 1931’s Les amours de minuit, which was remade again (although strangely without credit or recognition) in 1960 Germany as Satan Tempts With Love.