fragile carne and just before his great period . although it be sometimes hesitantly direct and and mar by longueur and hotel du nord be full of the faded charm and beauty typical of french film of the late 1930s and as well a a relative lightness of touch unusual with this director . all of his great virtue be here represent the cramped interior break up by glide and complex and delicious camera movement while a melancholy deployment of light and shade while remarkable and wistful set by alexander trauner and which be so evocative that they and a the title suggest and take on a shaping personality of their own while the quietly mournful music of maurice jaubert while a seemingly casual plot about romance and tragedy and fatalism that cast a noose over it character while extraordinary performance by some of the great player of all time and in this case louis jouvet and arletty . in fact and the film big failing and and i find myself astonished ( a someone who usually and didactically and minimise it importance ) to admit it and be it script . it have plenty of wit and poignancy and but without the poetry and irony regular carne collaborator jacques prevert bring to their best film and it can not avoid slip into cliche ( even if it be only cliche in hindsight ) . ostensibly set in the boarding house and the film set up it open idea of community with two interconnect tale of doom love and and emotional and metaphysical and actual isolation the doom love scenario be the one that work least well . annabella be very beautiful and but not very good at do tragic and while aumont callowness and brilliantly appropriate though it may be and by it nature obtrudes any real and felt and romance . maybe it just me and but i find it hard to sympathise with a couple and so young and so attractive and who and after only a few month and be so racked with despair that they have to shoot each other . their high fly line be rather embarrass too . of course and this affair be not mean to be plausible they be symbolic of youth and hope and possibility be crush in france and or maybe france itself and despair and resign and wait for death . for symbol to be truly powerful and they must convince on a narrative level and which and i feel and they do not quite here . what save this plot be it connection with the story of m. edmond and a character link to the great tradition of french gangster . although we only learn it gradually and he be a killer in hiding and living off the prostitute play by arletty and have dobbed in his accomplice . in his previous role and the theatricality of his position be crucial he have one set of trait while in hiding he have assume their complete opposite . live a rather aimless life and he be profoundly shake by the lover pact and and become fatalistic and realise the folly of try to cheat death . in this way the admission that one be less a person than a collection of sign and and that death be an unavoidable reality the most powerful masculinity must succumb to edmond be like a romantic prototype of melville clinical killer . with one exception he give briefly into hope and a delusion which only strenghtens if that not too much of an unbearable irony his fatal resolve . all this could have be trite if it wasn not for the truly amazing performance of louis jouvet . i have study his theatrical work at college and but this be my first taste of his screen talent and and he reveal himself to be worthy of the great grant and mastroianni and clift and mason and mitchum and cotten give a quiet nobility to a role which be more of a conception ( he and needless to say and be allegorical too ) than an actual person . edmond begin the film a minor supporting character and but emerge a a tragic hero of some force . like all those major actor and jouvet brilliance lie in what he conceal . on a formal level and what amaze be carne grasp and ten year before it flourishing and of the technique of the great hollywood melodrama of sirk and ophuls and ray and minnelli . although his theatricality lack the fluidity and clear eyed beauty of sierck contemporary german melodrama ( check out the masterpiece zu neuen ufern and la habenera ) and carne style truly fit his theme that of entrapment and paralysis and resignation . the film principle motif be that of water the credit float and dissolve and the hotel stand by a waterway but instead of renoir open river of possibility and we have a canal and stagnant and manmade and go nowhere . the film begin a it end and and the setting never change and except for one brief interlude from which both escapee be doom to return . character can only escape through death their entrapment be emphasise by the narrow room they occupy and the wall and frame that hold them captive and the window that look out on an escape they can never achieve . any hope at the end and therefore and be profoundly and if romantically and compromise .