On Blu-ray - David Hare survives a tornado to extol the pleasures of QUAI DES BRÛMES (Dir: Marcel Carné, Sc: Jacques Prévert, France, 1938)

We had been without power for nearly 48 hours since 130k plus winds tore through Wellington and the Wairarapa all through yesterday and last night. The first thing I experienced after so much natural chaos was a new 4K restoration of the 1938 classic Quai des Brûmes and it was suitably magnificent. 

Top screen is Canal’s lovely 2012 Blu-ray edition of the film , the third great collaboration of Carné and the grandaddy of Réalisme Poëtique, Jacques Prévert.

This was one of dozens of masterpieces released back then in the Canal Classiques range, all opening with a fabulous one minute montage of the greatest shots from French cinema, played to the irresistible zither theme from The Third Man, all in hi-def for the first time, and delivered in these superbly crafted cardboard containers which contained the disc, artwork and a booklet. Incredibly, they were all released commercially in Australia as well as the three major Canal markets, France, Germany and the UK.

Above new packaging of new 4K release

Now 23 years later StudioCanal has published a further cleanup to the original elements, prime and dupe. This is not actually my outright fave of the Prévert screenplays or indeed Carné. I am not always comfortable with the way the movie rides between its Gabin-on-the-lam trope, alternating with several other sub narratives and the safe haven of the bar where the denizens of “inquiétudes” take shelter, some of which becomes unnecessarily static. Meanwhile the deadly pretty boy poet, played by deadly real-life fascist Robert Le Vigan, spins his bottle of poisonous Céline-esque nihilism to rub salt into the rest of the cast’s wounds. Vigan in real life consorted with the Vichy filth and decamped to Argentina after the war.

Robert Le Vigan, Quai des Brûmes