Hôtel du Nord

Director: Marcel Carné

1938 / 83min / DCP

One of the high watermarks of so-called “poetic realism,” Carné’s sublimely seedy drama takes place in the precincts of the eponymous boarding house where two couples—sex worker Arletty and pimp Louis Jouvet; star-crossed lovers Annabella and Jean-Pierre Aumont—mix with the working-class locals around Paris’s polluted Canal Saint-Martin. Along with the pitch perfect performances, enjoy the seductive, jazzy score by the great Maurice Jaubert, as well as one of the most compulsively quoted scripts in the history of French cinema, including Arletty’s immortal, explosive: “Atmosphere, est-ce que j’ai une gueule d’atmosphere?”