Hôtel du Nord

A film set beside a canal in Paris. The hotel is small. It faces the Canal Saint-Martin and its guests are regular; workers, tenants, people passing through. The owners live there too. A first communion dinner is being held. A couple arrives at the hotel the same day. Pierre and Renée are young. They take a room. Their purpose is set. They will die together. Pierre shoots her. Then he cannot shoot himself and runs. Renée does not die. From there the film takes place in the hotel. She recovers and starts working there. There is another couple in the hotel. Edmond and Raymonde live together; he is running from a past and she knows it. Edmond takes an interest in Renée. Pierre is in prison. He gave himself up. The narrative moves among the four and settles fully on none of them. The people around are inside it too. A bargeman, a porter, a fugitive, two women and the owners. What the narrative is interested in is not love but a place: its idea is that all these people are wedged into one spot and that leaving the hotel is not an option for them. The canal, the bridge, the street and the quay are the narrative itself. There is a famous line. Raymonde shouts the word atmosphere during an argument and it became an idiom in France; Arletty plays the scene. The setting is not real. The canal and the hotel were rebuilt at full size in the Billancourt studios; the design is by Alexandre Trauner. That choice is a signature of French cinema of the period and makes the film's look. The source is Eugène Dabit's novel. Annabella, Jean-Pierre Aumont, Louis Jouvet, Arletty and Bernard Blier are in the cast. Marcel Carné directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes 1930s French cinema and poetic realism. Who it is not for: anyone looking for a tight plot; the narrative scatters and the central couple falls into the background after a point.