Quai des brumes

1938, France, directed by Marcel Carné (aka Port of Shadows)

A film I hadn't seen since college, and it blew me away to see it again now -- the intensity of feeling, the gorgeous photography, the use of sets with a judicious addition of location shooting, Gabin at his pre-war peak, the quite extraordinary support from Simon, Morgan, Brasseur, Le Vigan, and perhaps most of all the willingness to allow scenes to build and build (several of the sequences are exceptionally extended, quite rare in modern cinema except in something like Tarantino's deliberately affected approach).