Poetic Realism in French Cinema
INTRODUCTION
Two men walk along a dimly lit peninsula. They talk quietly. The air is misty. The sea is barely visible in the background, and further in the distance, a house emerges from the haze. There is something otherworldly, picturesque, and poetic in the atmosphere. This brief description is from the 1938 film Le Quai des brumes (Port of Shadows), directed by Marcel Carné.
This film is where it all began—my fascination with the style of French cinema that emerged in the mid-1930s, later known as poetic realism. The term itself originates more from literary realism than from cinema. Typically, the protagonists are working-class people, fugitives, criminals, or those living on the fringes of society. Love, its loss, and the presence or nearness of death are ever-present themes. The cynicism and pessimism of poetic realism reflect the past while foreshadowing the future: the rise of fascism, the impact of the Great Depression, and the onset of World War II. Poetic realism drew influences from German Expressionism.
While the films certainly share stylistic traits, it is crucial to emphasize that the filmmakers I discuss also brought their unique styles and thematic focuses. I have chosen to explore the signature works of three directors: Julien Duvivier, Jean Renoir, and Marcel Carné. Specifically, Duvivier’s Pépé le Moko, Renoir’s The Rules of the Game, and Carné’s Le Jour se lève (Daybreak) and Le Quai des brumes (Port of Shadows). My analysis of poetic realism centers around the content of these films. I make comparisons not only among these films but also briefly with other works. My goal is to discover the essence of poetic realism—what makes it significant, why the films of that era are still remembered, and why they remain cinematic classics. The golden age of French cinema began in the 1930s, although such recognition only came in retrospect.
Julien Duvivier’s Pépé le Moko
Julien Duvivier was one of the most important directors of his time and of French cinema. He was known as a quiet and reserved man with a pragmatic approach to filmmaking, favoring simplicity. Duvivier loved theater and originally wanted to become an actor, but perhaps his reserved nature ultimately thwarted those aspirations.
Released in 1938, Pépé le Moko is based on the novel by Henri La Barthe and tells the story of a gangster hiding in the Casbah of Algiers. When it comes to Duvivier’s favored simplicity, Pépé le Moko is a fitting example. This is not to say the film is lacking in style or narrative depth—on the contrary. But its inspiration seems to align more with the directness of American crime films, like those of Howard Hawks, rather than the more stylistic approaches of contemporaries like Renoir or Carné.
The audience is powerfully drawn into the film’s world through sharp editing and camera work. We start with a wide shot of the city and soon move into the narrow, labyrinthine alleys of the Casbah. We see locals and foreigners alike—children playing in tight streets, stray cats, women, cafés, and shady bars. It quickly becomes clear that the Casbah is like a Wild West—a place easy to vanish into. Such is the fate of Pépé le Moko, played by Jean Gabin, a gangster wanted for numerous crimes. He is a man who must be captured at any cost—and eventually is.
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| Jean Gabin as Pepe le Moko |
Pépé le Moko is a fascinating blend of classic crime cinema with elements characteristic of poetic realism. The melancholic tone sets it apart. A strong example of this mood is found in Michael Curtiz’s Casablanca, which came five years later and clearly drew influence from Duvivier’s film. Where Gabin’s character runs a full emotional gamut—from laid-back to paranoid wreck, consumed by the desperate fever of love—Bogart’s Rick Blaine broods in a dark room, sipping cognac and sulking over a lost love who suddenly reappears in Morocco.
Certainly, one could argue that French poetic realism did not invent tragic endings, but its power lies in the overall atmosphere and emotional tone. For instance, Howard Hawks’ Scarface (1932) also ends tragically, but its tone is far more violent and aggressive than the mournful, elegiac ending of Pépé le Moko. Pépé risks his freedom for love and is arrested. The final scene says it all: a close-up of Jean Gabin’s face behind the barred gates of the port, gazing wistfully, tearfully at the woman he loves on the deck of a ship. Lost freedom, lost love—farewell Paris, welcome death. In the end, Pépé takes his own life with a knife hidden in his coat pocket. This dark, melodramatic descent into doom is a hallmark of poetic realism.
Jean Renoir and The Rules of the Game
Where Duvivier approached filmmaking with pragmatism, Jean Renoir’s The Rules of the Game (1939) represents the opposite end of poetic realism. This magnum opus is a towering intellectual work, just as Jean Renoir is synonymous with French cinema—forever and always. The son of impressionist painter Auguste Renoir, Jean was often described as a great humanist. His career spanned five decades, drawing early influence from French and German avant-garde movements, before turning to German Expressionism.
Films such as The Crime of Monsieur Lange (1936), La Grande Illusion (1937), La Bête Humaine (1938), and The Rules of the Game secured his legacy as a master of poetic realism. The film itself is layered and open to interpretation. Its message—if one can call it that—emerges from sharp, deliberate dialogue that often points in several directions at once. This richness is central to its power.
Renoir co-wrote the script with German director Carl Koch. Upon release, the film was a commercial failure, misunderstood by audiences and dismissed as an attack on the upper class. While I can understand the film’s complexity being a hurdle, the accusations of class slander seem misplaced.
At its heart, the story revolves around a web of romantic entanglements. The celebrated aviator Jurieux is in love with Christine, the wife of Marquis Robert de la Cheyniest. Octave, Jurieux’s friend (played charmingly by Renoir himself), is also in love with Christine. Meanwhile, a poacher named Marceau, hired by the Marquis, flirts with the wife of General Schumacher, and the Marquis himself has had his share of affairs.
At the grand party held at the estate, this tangle of affections begins to unravel. People fall in love, fall out of love, and the aristocracy chats endlessly about nonsense. The turning point comes when alcohol and emotion unleash chaos—almost farcical in nature. General Schumacher chases Marceau with a gun for seducing his wife. The Marquis punches Jurieux for trying to steal his own wife. Love is declared—or left undeclared—amid confusion and uncertainty.
Yes, this all sounds convoluted. But Renoir himself said he never intended to moralize, and indeed he doesn’t. Instead, he raises questions without wagging a finger—using satire to do so. Unlike Carné, who often works with raw emotion, Renoir cuts through bourgeois superficiality to expose absurdity and collapse. Much like Émile Zola in Nana, where both Nana and her admirers fall into a grotesque void of decadence. Renoir even directed a film adaptation of Nana in 1929.
As the party ends, Octave and Christine walk to a greenhouse. General Schumacher mistakes Christine for his wife and loads his gun. Octave returns to fetch Christine’s coat and, in an act of kindness, gives it instead to Jurieux, telling him Christine is waiting. Jurieux rushes to the greenhouse, only to be shot and killed by the General. And so, the group’s internal tensions are released—literally. It’s striking how the dynamics among characters teeter on the edge of class differences and personal responsibility. In the end, the Marquis shrugs off the tragedy, calling Jurieux’s death an unfortunate accident—brushing it aside.
Perhaps individual responsibility shouldn’t be replaced by collective guilt, though foolishness does intensify in groups. Still, The Rules of the Game retains its poetic realist undercurrent. Its world is rich, surprising, and complex. The film was still playing in theaters when war was declared on September 3, 1939. It was later banned.
Renoir’s films are also celebrated for their innovative use of the camera. One example is the sudden pan from one subject to another—a technique used in The Rules of the Game when Marceau is setting traps in the woods, and the camera smoothly shifts to General Schumacher and two guards without a cut. The camera might follow a pair of women in conversation and suddenly swing to another group, as if navigating the scene independently.
In The Crime of Monsieur Lange, the final scene features the protagonist running through a corridor inside a building. The camera tracks him from outside, through the windows, and then makes a 360-degree pan as he emerges at the front door—precisely timed. Depth of field was also a crucial tool in Renoir’s visual storytelling.
About images. I love images.
Moving images. Medium close-ups, close-ups, extreme close-ups. Camera movements where the frame slowly drifts away from its subject or quietly approaches it. Above all, I love images of faces—how they move on the screen, what they express, or what they long to say. When we talk about close-ups, camera angles, framing, and the bold stylistic combinations of international cinema that Carl Th. Dreyer bravely used to make a film that remained distinctly his own, we must mention The Passion of Joan of Arc from 1928.
Despite its austere aesthetics, the film is visually rich—breathtaking even—and owes much of that to Maria Falconetti’s extraordinary performance. A slow tracking shot from left to right. Guards, clergymen, and the bishop himself. Close-up after close-up. I’m almost certain the full range of human emotion is traversed in the first fifteen minutes. The importance of empty space in composition is often emphasized as a counterbalance to close-ups—where a face is placed off-center or at the bottom of the frame, leaving room for visual emptiness. And then there are those white walls, the background to Falconetti’s face, and those sorrowful yet calm eyes, almost frozen from tears.
“And your release?”
In the final montage, brutality and abuse of power are cruelly juxtaposed with empathy and humanity.
In Earth – Zemlya by Alexander Dovzhenko (1930), we see the fields swaying in the wind. Then, a beautifully framed shot: a woman on the left, a sunflower on the right. Close-ups of apple tree branches, of apples. Semion is dying, and the camera turns to the faces of people. Medium close-ups, close-ups—thankfully. The film alternates between similar shots, and the music creates a calm feeling... meditative, with no rush. I keep repeating to myself: there is no rush. I'm mesmerized. I love these kinds of slow, contemplative openings—or endings. Like Michelangelo Antonioni’s empty streets and deserted landscapes, always defined by silence and alienation.
After the tranquil beginning of Earth, the rhythm shifts, the music intensifies, and once again we see faces—crying, grieving, enraged faces. They mourn, they rage. Emotion. A film must stay in motion. Above all, it must have rhythm—and like in music, rhythm must shift. Otherwise, the result can become flat and tedious.
Andre De Toth’s Crime Wave (1953) impresses with its all-American coolness and sharp one-liners. It doesn’t pretend to be anything other than a pure crime film. When the cop asks Gat Morgan, “Got ID?” Gat Morgan replies, “Yeah,” and fills him with lead. That’s how business gets handled. A few stunning extreme close-ups and a tracking shot at the end. Steve Lacey (Gene Nelson), a former criminal recently released from prison, unwillingly gets pulled back into the criminal world. Eventually, they all get caught, and the tough-as-nails Lt. Sims (Sterling Hayden) softens just enough to let Lacey go free.
For a few seconds, when Ben Hastings (Charles Bronson) is fleeing through a dim alley and the shadows cast themselves across a stone wall—I almost burst with joy.
Odd Man Out (1947)—please, let that scene last even thirty seconds... but no.
Marcel Carné’s films are best described as visually elegant. Films where doomed love and death are intertwined in a way that is partially fatalistic and poetic, dreamlike even, but still so grounded in reality that they touch the very edge of the psyche where loss and death become flesh. Much of this visual brilliance can be credited to the Hungarian-born art director Alexandre Trauner, especially in Port of Shadows (1938) and Daybreak (1939).
The scenarios and dialogues often came from Carné’s close collaborator Jacques Prévert. Carné met actress Françoise Rosay on the verge of adulthood, who introduced him to her husband, French director Jacques Feyder. Feyder took Carné under his wing as an assistant. Carné learned the importance of editing and rhythm in film. When Feyder left for the U.S., Carné made his first short film, Nogent, Eldorado du Dimanche (1929), capturing everyday Parisians—similar in spirit to Jean Vigo’s À Propos de Nice, released the same year.
Avant-Garde Cinema showcased Carné’s short, and when René Clair saw it, he invited Carné to assist him. Carné agreed. He returned as Feyder’s assistant upon his return from America.
Carné’s first feature film was Jenny (1936), with Prévert already onboard. Their true collaboration began in 1937 with the comedy Bizarre, Bizarre, based on J. Storer Clouston’s novel, co-written with Prévert.
Jacques Prévert was a French writer, poet, and lyricist. He also wrote plays for the Groupe Octobre theatre troupe but is best remembered for his work with director Marcel Carné, crafting scenarios and dialogues. He worked with other directors too, including Jean Renoir and Jean Grémillon.
Port of Shadows (1938), based on Pierre Mac Orlan’s novel, was a magnificent example of Carné and Prévert’s collaboration. A hazy gem of poetic realism, where Prévert’s dialogue is at once sharply witty, poignantly poetic, and profoundly moving. When the melancholy Nelly (Michèle Morgan) says:
“Each time the sun rises, we think something new will happen, something fresh. Then the sun goes to bed and so do we. It’s sad.”
There’s nothing more to add. And that’s just one of Prévert’s many masterfully crafted, emotionally rich lines.
In the film, Jean (Jean Gabin), a deserter, arrives in the foggy port city of Le Havre. He finds himself in a shabby little place called Panama, where he meets the sad-eyed Nelly and a colorful cast of misfits—like Le Peintre, whose poetic musings are pure music.
Le Havre is also home to a small-time gang. Lucien (Pierre Brasseur) leads it, but a few slaps from Jean are enough to put him in his place. Michel Simon’s Zabel—Nelly’s guardian—is a sinister figure, charming only when he wants to be. Jean and Nelly decide to leave Le Havre behind, but a humiliated Lucien, bitter from the blows and rejection, shoots Jean.
Port of Shadows combines the bleakness of a port city with the misty melancholy of wet streets, yet thanks to Prévert, Carné, and powerful performances from Gabin and Morgan, the film exudes deep sensitivity—even humor. Above all, Prévert infused it with poetic allure.
Though it feels grounded, the entire film was practically shot in a studio—from the port scenes onward.
The darkness of poetic realism is captured perfectly in how one producer deemed the script too depressing. The film was eventually funded by Gregor Rabinovitch of Cine-Alliances—thanks in part to Jean Gabin’s persuasive support. This wouldn’t have flown in the U.S. with its much stricter studio system.
From Port of Shadows, Carné and Prévert plunged into the even darker and more cynical Le Jour se Lève – Daybreak (1939). Watching its opening scenes feels like standing beneath a shower of feathers—until you realize you’re wading through pitch-black tar, knee-deep.
Carné once said he and Prévert knew war was coming—it was only a matter of time. That dread shaped the film’s tone. I’m not surprised.
In Daybreak, Jean Gabin’s character François meets the charming Françoise. They fall in love—like flakes swirling in a snow globe. But the mood quickly shifts when Valentin (Jules Berry) enters, confusing Françoise with his sweet talk. Eventually, Clara (Arletty), Valentin’s former flame, moves in with François and Françoise to calm things down—but as is often the case in poetic realism, things escalate, and two cold bodies are left behind.
The despair and anxiety in Daybreak are reminiscent of Josef von Sternberg’s The Blue Angel (1930).
Valentin is the archetypal manipulator—a charming con artist. Prévert captured him with alarming precision: seductive on the surface, hollow and ruthless beneath. Jules Berry, to his credit, was brilliant—made for this role.
What’s intriguing is how Daybreak begins at the end. From the present to flashbacks and back again—a narrative technique rarely seen in the 1930s.
Among the undisputed stars of the 1930s are Jean Gabin and Arletty. Gabin started in music halls as a comedic singer and had his first role in Marcel Givrot’s Chacun sa Chance (1930). He slowly rose to fame—ultimately becoming the face of poetic realism’s working-class hero. Gabin had that tough-guy tenderness—dare I say, like Bogart in Nicholas Ray’s In a Lonely Place (1950). Both could break down emotions and deliver them with uncanny precision. That’s true range.
Arletty came from modest beginnings and once worked in a factory. She got into modeling and later the stage. In 1929, she began getting small film roles. Her debut with Carné came in Hotel du Nord (1938)—not a failure, but something was missing. Prévert wasn’t available, so Henri Jeanson wrote the dialogue—especially sharp for Arletty, whose “Atmosphere! Atmosphere!” monologue was hilarious and iconic.
She seemed like a force of nature, on and off-screen.
During the war, Arletty was arrested for associating with a German officer. To her critics, she famously said:
“My heart is French, but my body is international.”
In any case, she brought captivating life and beauty to film, starring in many of Carné’s works—including Children of Paradise (1945).
Where Duvivier’s Pépé le Moko has “drawn inspiration” from Howard Hawks’ crime films, Renoir—particularly in The Rules of the Game—takes a socially critical stance, using satire to examine the individual and their responsibility, as well as the tensions that arise within groups. Marcel Carné and Jacques Prévert immerse themselves in portraying the internal and external pressures weighing on the individual, and the inevitability of doomed love.
Then there is the despair between man and woman. The kind that flickers in a few passing scenes or quietly glimmers in the background, dark and brooding—born out of ignorance or silent jealousy. The boundless sorrow of one who loses the other. That grief is never dissected in these films; it simply is. Death, the final act, is the endpoint. No explanations, no final monologues. The dead are dead.
This death—life’s fragile haiku—spills over us in heavy images, collapsing like Jean Gabin himself, not leaving us with questions but offering an answer we may have already sensed earlier in the film. The foundational premise of poetic realism is, fittingly, poetic—just as its aesthetics are. Its realism stems from a sense of human estrangement, the bare condition of existing, and the persistence of longing.
Its beauty and its tragedy lie in love, and just as much in the loss of it. Still, the endings of these films do not leave a bitter or sour taste—or perhaps they do—but more than that, they leave a lingering resonance. In my mind, I begin to hear the ethereal, melancholy tones of the Cocteau Twins: Seekers who are lovers
Jean Gabin and Michele Morgan in Port of Shadows (1938)
VIITTEET s. 2. Jaakko Seppälä, World Film History 1. luento 7 Thompson, Bordwell. Introduction to film history s. 328-329 s. 3 Drazin, Charles. The Faber book of French Cinema s. 103-105 s. 4 Thompson, Brodwell s. 330-331 Nowell-Smith, Geoffrey. The Oxford History of Cinema s. 338-339 Jaakko Seppälä World Film History 1 s. 5 Thopsom, Brodwell s. 331 Renoir interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69woK9y8oTQ s. 6 Drazin ,Charles.186 s. 7 Bazin, Andre. Elokuvien mestareita s.51 Thompson, Bordwell s.188-189 s. 9 Drazin s. 151-152 Nylen, Antti / Jacques Prevert. Sanoja s. 150-152 s. 10 Peter von Bagh. Kaipuun punainen hetki s.119 s. 11 Drazin. s. 156 Marcel Carne. UK. Doc part. 3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VU8ZpuULLaw&t=257s s. 12 Nowell-Smith, Geoffrey s. 307, 347 s. 13 Nylen, Antti. Jacques Prevert – Sanoja. Venähtänyt aamuhetki s. 6.Kaurismäki, Aki. Calamari Union
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