“To me, a swimmer is already a drowned man.” This line spoken by an artist early in Marcel Carné’s Le quai des brumes (US: Port of Shadows) beautifully encapsulates the film’s wistful spirit. Perhaps the apotheosis of the French poetic realism movement, Carné’s film manufactures a bright romance amidst a bleak minefield of gangsters, predators, and police. Appearing far more world-weary than her mere seventeen years on earth would justify, Michèle Morgan plays Nelly, the ward and possible sex slave of her homely godfather Zabel (Michel Simon) who may have murdered her previous boyfriend, and Jean Gabin plays Jean, an army deserter and drifter preparing to escape the nothingness of his life by boarding a ship to Venezuela. Having met by chance at Panama’s, a remote dockside hole-in-the-wall where Jean obtained civilian clothes, new identity papers, and a warm meal, the couple is able to spend one beautiful night together before their demons come calling. A little stray dog becomes Jean’s permanent companion, perhaps representing the innocence the young lovers wish they still had. Carné conjures port city Le Havre as a dreamy, self-contained island of fate where fog rolls by and windows glow at night, the plaintive horns of ships constantly reminding us of all the possibilities lost.