Joaquim da Silva Fontes, Significação e Estabilidade do Género no ...

strikingly atmospheric view of the demimonde of these outcasts, and so does another line
pronounced by Arletty and which would become one of the most famous lines in French
cinema: “Atmosphère? Atmosphère? Est-ce que j’ai une gueule d’atmosphère?” 33
Figure 24. Hôtel du Nord
In all these films, especially Hôtel du Nord, Carné manages to spread a climate of
fear, through dialogues of despondency in a society which was only beginning to stand up
against the rise tide of extremism and fascism. Dudley Andrew comments that the film
sought to show just how social outcasts live in this spectacular milieu along the Seine:
Hôtel du Nord replaces a cinema of events with one of people, language and milieu.
It asks its viewers to enjoy the ordinary interplay of social types on the ordinary
streets of Paris. Of course neither those streets (the picturesque Canal Saint Martin
and le quai des Jemappes that runs beside it) nor those types (Jouvet as the pimp,
Arletty as the whore, Bernard Blier as the cuckold, and so forth) are ordinary at all.
An idealized, poeticized reality encourages viewers to measure the reach and
aspiration of their own ordinary lives, to look for the picturesque details in their own
homes and neighbourhoods, waiting for the chance to blurt out to a friend, a lover,
33 “Atmosphere? Atmosphere? Do I look like an atmosphere?” (my translation)
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