When her fiancé breaks off their engagement, Danielle leaves London and returns to her mother, Jenny, in Paris. With her business partner Benoît, Jenny runs what appears to be a respectable nightclub – it is in fact a place where wealthy men can buy the favours of attractive young women. Oblivious to her mother's professional and personal life, Danielle meets a handsome young man named Lucien, and falls in love with him – not realising that he is Jenny's lover...
Acting
Françoise Rosay's matriarch: steel wrapped in velvet
Production
The nightclub as character—glamour built on transactional despair
Director
Marcel Carné
Françoise Rosay
Jenny Gauthier
Albert Préjean
Lucien Dancret
Lisette Lanvin
Danielle Bricart
Charles Vanel
Benoit
Roland Toutain
Xavier
Sylvia Bataille
Florence
Jean-Louis Barrault
le Dromadaire
Robert Le Vigan
l'Albinos
Margo Lion
Madame Vrack
René Génin
le pêcheur du bistrot
Roger Blin
le malade solitaire
Marcel Mouloudji
le chanteur des rues
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Marcel Carné made this before his legendary partnership with screenwriter Jacques Prévert; you can feel him grasping toward the fatalism that would define 'Port of Shadows.'
Released just before the Hays Code crackdown reached France, 'Jenny' captures a brief window when European cinema could acknowledge that mothers had sex lives—and daughters suffered for it.
FR
