I first saw Hotel du Nord as part of a double bill with a film by Jean Renoir (I forget which - though I think the brilliant Le Crime De Monsieur Lange) and I was frankly going to see the Renoir film and thought, hmmm, I'll just have to sit through Hotel du Nord and grin and bear it. Something about the film just really didn't appeal. Then right from the opening shot that tracks down from the bridge over the canal Saint Martin and along the side of the canal to where the two lovers, played by Annabella and Jean-Pierre Aumont, settle against one another on a bench, despairing and apparently doomed I simply didn't look back. I couldn't.

Since that Sunday afternoon I have always had something of a soft spot for Hotel du Nord. It is firmly placed in the traditional of French cinema of the thirties. Like his contemporaries, Renoir et al, the director Marcel Carne made films that were considered to be part of the poetic-realism (or at least are now known as) movement that was inspired as much by cinema as Carne being a member of a left wing political party heavily influenced by Communism. It is noticeable in the film, as in Renoir's Le Crime de Monsieur Lange, that the titular hotel is almost something of a commune, the protagonists gather around to celebrate and eat together. They are almost a family and there is a sense that they all support one another.

Released in 1938, Hotel du Nord was remarkable for the set, as the hotel really did exist but was unfilmable around, was so huge that it had to be built outside of the studio itself and was even used for parties by the producer, so expensive was it (even Picasso, it seems, turned up to see it at one time). And so, as you can imagine, most of the film is set in the hotel and street and canal before it. In less skilled hands this might have been a problem, but with only a few scenes set outside of the hotel and its immediate environs (a hospital and the Riviera) it actually reinforces the socio-political nature of the film and sense of community amongst the characters, even if they do not always like one another.

The story juxtaposes two sets of lovers: Annabella and Aumont's doomed love affair, who, appearing at the Hotel du Nord, decide to end their lives in a lover's suicide pact. The second pair already resides in the Hotel du Nord: Prostitute and Pimp played by Arletty (yes, French stars of the thirties really had a thing for having only one name!) and Louis Jouvet. It is this second pair that come through as the real stars of the film (though apparently marginal characters in the book upon which the film was based), though originally Annabella and Aumont were seen as the stars of the film and get top billing.

Surrounding the pair of lovers is a series of characters whose lives interconnect the Hotel du Nord in one way or another. Some come to the hotel to drink and to eat - for the hotel, noticeably, is described as a weekday hotel, i.e. it is to support the working classes, providing them a place to eat and drink in an atmosphere of communal friendliness. The characters that play about the margin add to the richness of the film. The lockkeeper gives blood and announces to Annabella that he saved her life that his blood is in her veins. He is deeply proud of the responsibility of keeping her alive, though it is clear his motivation for giving blood - and a joke is made of it throughout - is as much financial as philanthropic. Annabella, indeed, needs blood as Aumont, making good half of the suicide pact shoots Annabella, but does not kill her. Losing his nerve, he cannot also kill himself and flees, only to give himself up to the police in a fit of guilt and remorse. Thus, Annabella, recovers - thanks in part to the lockkeeper's blood - and returns to the Hotel du Nord to collect her few worldly possessions. Unsurprisingly, considering the political nature of the film, when she returns to the hotel, commune and family-like as it is, she is embraced by the people there and given a job working as a maid and waitress. There she finds a measure of redemption, though it is clear that she is not happy. She is troubled by the past, and by the attitude of Aumont, as he languishes in jail, rebuffing her attempts to break through his clearly affected lack of feeling for her.

But of course Annabella troubles Jouvet's pimp, who like Annabella is disturbed by his past, though his is far shadier than Annabella's. Here, though, is the core of the film. Annabella's and Aumont's performance are very good, but Jouvet and Arletty's are frankly magnificent. They have more life about them. Annabella and Aumont both do doomed and troubled magnificently but Arletty does life; her prostitute is welcomed amongst the Hotel du Nord family and you can see why. Equally, you can see why Jouvet's misanthropic, self-involved pimp is not. Arletty is genuine and passionate. She loves Jouvet, even though it is clear he does not love her, though he certainly doesn't hate her at all. Disappointed by his inability to love or care for her, she nevertheless makes the best of a bad lot and the performance is filled with energy and life. When the two spar together, in the famous 'Atmosphere' scene they fill the screen. They feel like two characters walking across the canal Saint Martin and not two characters enlarged upon a screen by fragments of projected light. Equally, the relationship, though close to cliché, never once approaches it. Again, the skill of Arletty and Jouvet refuse to allow the characters to become trite. Both exist as people and you can sense in their performances everything that has led them to this point; they have histories and feelings and are more complex than so many surface performances of prostitute and pimp often are on screen.

But here is the standout I think: Louis Jouvet as Monsieur Edmond. His character could so easily be a dislikable bastard, frankly, but he never is. There is something within him that we recognise is different, damaged and not right, just like we see in Arletty's performance, and in that of Annabella's and Aumont's. Only with Juvert's Edmond, we can feel it so much further down under the surface and when Annabella returns to the Hotel du Nord from the hospital she turns heads, most noticeably Jouvet's (who, incidentally, discovered Aumont having shot Annabella, but lets him leave free). In a less subtle film Jouvet, apparent bastard that he is, might wish to possess Annabella almost by force of will (i.e. Kim Ki-Duk's Bad Guy - though that is admittedly a different kind of film altogether), rather she changes him, touches that part of him that is ingrained in the past. Such he even imagines that he is in love with Annabella, though probably, genuinely, is. Again, rather than become a simpering character, being entirely redeemed and made good, Jouvet controls his acting and only ever opens up slightly, but it is enough to understand where his character has come from and why he has had to take on the façade that he has placed before himself. It is a masterful performance of understatement in an already understated film.

Visually, the film is magnificent. Carne's camera flows about the mocked up canal Saint Martin and the imagined Hotel du Nord with elegant ease. Each character under his direction, whether the chamber maid or even the Catalan child the proprietors of the hotel have adopted all exist as people, they have defined characters and give the film its richness, a richness that is echoed in the elegant use of camera. Testament to Carne's skill is that we never feel that we are watching a film; rather we feel that we are genuinely watching people pass by in front of us. We might well be sitting on one of the benches by the canal and then turning round to see the hotel behind us to witness the lives of the characters within. For the characters indeed have lives, occasionally we dwell on simple things as often it is these simple things that tell us most about people: their lives and their attitudes.

It is hard to express the power or Hotel du Nord. The performances are so beautifully nuanced, the set magnificent and real, the direction effortless and elegant that it neglects the fact that the film has a real emotional impact, all the more effective and moving for the sense of watching real people who existed before the film started and that will continue to live after the film ends. Equally, though I will not explain why as it will ruin the ending, the film begins and ends in such a manner that it gains continuity, it gives a sense of opening and closure in a natural, almost organic way.

Though nearly eighty years old, Hotel du Nord has not aged. It may be black and white, it may not be in English, it may not have stars we necessarily all recognise. But it speaks of human feelings and human situations and lives that ring true today because Carne is not interested in gimmicks or contrivances but the affecting situations and mistakes that normal, ordinary, flawed human beings make. Thus I have no qualms in referring to Hotel du Nord as a masterpiece, for it is a masterpiece. Admittedly this is a word bandied about with far greater use than should really be applied but Hotel du Nord is indeed worthy of the title. Equally, if this is not a film loved and respected another eighty years from now, I will be amazed (though I doubt I will live long enough to see that long a span of time) as it is a truly human, truly humane story, brilliantly acted and conceived story and suffused with such generosity of spirit and vertiginous depths of humanity that I cannot but love this film, and thank those people who decided to show it as the first half of a double-bill when I never had heard of it before.

As for the extras there are not many. There is a rather good introduction to the film, which is both informative and interesting, though it does show a few too many clips from the film, which is unnecessary as we about to watch it anyway. Nevertheless, the film historian Paul Ryan is knowledgeable and passionate and so makes up for the superfluous clips.

Otherwise we have the always entertaining original trailer: a fascinating historical monument to how films were sold then and are not now. It let's the audience understand the feel of the film and not just flash cut flash cut flash cut. There's also a stills gallery, which is not bad too.