Hôtel du Nord (1938) on Netflix
NR19381h 37mComedyDramaRomance
Renée and Pierre, who cannot afford to marry, take a room at the Hôtel du Nord on the Canal Saint-Martin. The prostitute Raymonde and her pimp Edmond live in the hotel.
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- Netflix3.8/5
- IMDb7.5/103,679 votes
- Rotten TomatoesNot available
Trailer
Plot summary
A first communion party brings the residents of the Hôtel du Nord together at the hotel on the Canal Saint-Martin. Raymonde, a prostitute, is among them, and Edmond, her pimp, stays in their room to develop the photographs he has taken. Renée and Pierre, young and without regular jobs, arrive and take a room for the night. They cannot afford to marry or to set up a home, and once they are alone they carry out a plan to kill themselves. Pierre shoots Renée, then cannot bring himself to kill himself. Edmond breaks in at the sound and tells the boy to flee.
Cast
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Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Hôtel du Nord (1938)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Carné and his producer Joseph Lucachevitch decided the real Canal Saint-Martin location was too difficult, so they rebuilt the hotel and canal at Billancourt Studios, digging ditches and filling them with water on land owned by the local cemetery.
- Arletty and Marcel Achard credited screenwriter Jeanson with the film's famous line, but Bertrand Tavernier, in his 2016 film Voyage through French Cinema, says screenwriter Jean Aurenche slipped it in as a response to Carné's repeated reproach that he made films "which lack atmosphere".
- Eugène Dabit, whose popular novel Hôtel du Nord won the 1929 Populist Prize, was the son of the owners of the real Hôtel du Nord on the Canal Saint-Martin in Paris; he died of scarlet fever in 1936 and never saw the film.
- Arletty's line "Atmosphere! Atmosphere! Do I look like an atmosphere?" became one of the famous lines of French cinema history.
- Because Hitler had recently invaded Czechoslovakia, the filmmakers hurried the shoot to avoid delays that the outbreak of war could cause.
