Jean Gabin stars as an army deserter looking for another chance to make good in life in Marcel Carné’s stark portrayal of an underworld of lonely souls wrestling with their own destinies. Port of Shadows is a quintessential example of poetic realism from the golden age of French cinema.

Banned by the French army in 1939 for being “immoral and detrimental to young people,” this fog-ridden proto-noir is a masterpiece of poetic realism. Le Havre is the port inked in shadows, fertile ground for dog-eat-dog betrayals, tough hoodlums, and—in Michèle Morgan’s Nelly—even tougher dames.