571 - Remorques, France, 1941. Dir. Jean Gremillon.
Visa ministeriel No. 806 du 16.2.1946.
In seaport Brest a sailor is getting married. Pierre is marrying Marie. His fellow Cyclone towboat crewmen and their wives are in attendance, including his captain Andre Laurent and his wife Yvonne, and shipmate Tanguy, who is the only one present who does not know his wife is cheating on him.
The Laurents have been married ten years, and Andre is faithful. Yvone trusts in his fidelity, yet she worries for his life. Like the anguished wife of a fireman or soldier, she sits at home and broods over the possibility of his never coming home again. She is also ill, with a developing heart condition diagnosed by their family doctor who is a family friend. She withholds this information from Andre, as she suspects Dr. Maulette has been withholding the full severity of the problem from her.
The wedding reception is cut short mid-toast by the SOS of a freighter, Mirva, who has just lost her rudder in a storm.
The men race to the rescue, slowed down only by the late arrival of Le Gall, who was engaged in a quickie with Tanguy's wife. After berating him, Laurent leads the Cyclone in a race against their competitors, the Dutch, to tie off to the Mirva. While this is a rescue operation, it is also a business. The first one there gets the prize, which means money for the company and salaries for the men.
What they do not know, however, is that Mirva captain Marc is a little less than scrupulous. He has good insurance, and he intends to let the Mirva founder along with his men so that he can collect the big payout. As long as he has his wife Catherine, who is mysteriously aboard with the men, then why not let the rest of it sink to the bottom of the sea.
Catherine for her part wants to have nothing to do with his schemes. Or with him. She has been married to Marc for two years, and she is done with him. This instance is just one of many where he has shown himself to be not merely unethical but also criminal in his dealings, likewise with her.
So she grabs a man and a raft and makes her way to the towboat ahead of them. The one attached by rope. The rope symbolizing the blessing of marriage. And the curse of marriage. From "blessed be the ties that bind" on the one hand, to "gave him enough rope to hang himself" on the other.
Catherine is about to enter Andre's life and affect it considerably.
Remember, he is a man of integrity, and he is faithful.
It is just that, in the world of this film, there is that thing called fate that we have to deal with.
Remorques fits into a style of film known as poetic realism, a 1930s precursor to film noir. When one thinks of the influences on film noir, one might think more of German expressionism or American crime fiction, but French poetic realism is in there too. If expressionism provides the sharp shadows, poetic realism provides the smoke. And the moodiness.
They all provide the fatalism.
Remorques stars our man Jean Gabin, possibly the greatest of the French stars, along with Michele Morgan as one of his leading ladies. Gabin and Morgan had already starred in a Marcel Carne film called Port of Shadows (1938), which we will see later.
Director Jean Gremillon began the film before the outbreak of World War 2, but he finished it two years later under German occupation--without his stars, who had fled to America, and without access to civilian ships or their seaports, as they had been closed to French civilians by the German army. Therefore, parts of the action sequences at sea were filmed with miniatures in a studio tank. These limitations did not stop Remorques from being a hit.
Some critics view Remorques as a precursor to Casablanca, as Gabin is a precursor to Humphrey Bogart. If it is, it is one more of mood or tone than of plot or even theme.
Remorques contains some thoughtful dialogue on love and fidelity in the midst of its romantic air.
Sometimes a man gets the woman he loves. Sometimes a man gets one woman and loves another. Sometimes a man loses both.
On the Title
A remorque is a vehicle without a motor intended to be towed by another vehicle; in other words, a trailer.
In America, when one uses the word trailer, one thinks of a mobile home, a vehicle that is typically mobile once or twice in its existence--from manufacturer to dealer, from dealer to owner. Often it never moves again.
A trailer could also refer to a boat trailer, a flatbed trailer, or the container portion of a tractor trailer truck. The tractor is the cab with the motor. The trailer is the container being pulled behind it.
In this film, the protagonist, Captain Andre Laurent, and his crew run a towboat. They are in friendly competition against another towboat, The Dutch. In French, a towboat is le remorqueur. Être à la remorqu means to be in tow. But we do not think of trailers on the sea. The vessel being pulled is not a vessel without an engine but one in which the engine is not currently working. A vessel in distress.
The film is not named Les remorqueurs, the towboats, but Remorques, (the) (ones being) towed.
One can see why the distributors chose to rename the film Stormy Waters in English. It would be difficult for viewers to understand let alone be drawn to see the film behind a title called The Towed, much less The Trailers.
What did you see when you went to the movies?
I saw The Trailers.
Yes, I know. But what movie did you see?
The Trailers.
You just saw the trailers?
Yes.
But didn't you see a movie?
Yes.
What movie did you see?
The Trailers.
Etc.
And yet, the original title, if we translate it The Towed, does a nice job of invoking the fatalistic determinism of the story. Andre and Catherine are humans in distress, being tossed about on billows of the sea, not having the power to determine their own direction, being towed by forces too powerful for them, by fate.
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