Hôtel du Nord is a 1938 French drama film directed by Marcel Carné that stars Arletty, Louis Jouvet, Annabella, and Jean-Pierre Aumont.

As the locals drink and dance in the street on the 14th of July, Edmond returns from Egypt, and Renée warns him that the two criminals are waiting for him in the hotel.

After the controversy over the army deserter in Port of Shadows, Carné wanted to steer clear of anything with political implications for his next film.

The author was the son of the owners of the real Hôtel du Nord which, like the film, was located along the Canal Saint-Martin in Paris.

[citation needed] Carné initially thought of his friend Jacques Prévert to write the screenplay, but he was busy with other projects.

[2] Carné and his roommate Maurice Bessy (editor of the French movie magazine Cinémonde) went to the real Hôtel du Nord to soak up the atmosphere and get inspiration for how the film should look.

[3] For the leading role, Carné's production company Sedif suggested a rising young actress with an innocent beauty.

[4] For the role of doomed pimp Edmond, Carné selected Louis Jouvet whom he had directed in Drôle de Drame (1935).

Jouvet and Arletty are remembered as French cinema's most iconic pairing with their darkly comic bickering making up the more memorable moments of the film.

[4] Because of the political complications of the time (Hitler's recent invasion of Czechoslovakia), the filmmakers wanted to shoot quickly to avoid any delays that could be caused by the outbreak of war.

[citation needed] Carné and his producer Joseph Lucachevitch thought that it would be too difficult to shoot the film in its location on the Canal Saint-Martin.

Time Out called it "a very likeable film, but...Carné's 'poetic realism' seems a trifle thin and hesitant in this populist yarn about a sleazy Parisian hotel and its inhabitants.

"[7] Senses of Cinema noted that Hôtel du Nord has been ignored by contemporary critics because it came between Carné's two masterpieces Port of Shadows and Le jour se lève.

"[9] While Arletty and Marcel Achard refer to the screenwriter Jeanson as the author of the famous line, Bertrand Tavernier in his film Voyage through French Cinema (2016) says that it would have been the screenwriter Jean Aurenche who would have slipped in this line in response to the reproach that Carné addressed to him repeatedly for making films "which lack atmosphere".

Carné writes in his book of memories La Vie à Belles Dents: "It must be said that Arletty was the soul of the film.

Not only did she transcend certain lines, certain author's words that I hardly liked because of their outrageous style, like the famous 'Atmosphere' to which her talent, her artistic magic, made her a success that we remember.

So too, the novel ends with the Lecouvreur's reluctantly selling the hotel to a large company that plans to construct an office building on the site and the tenants must unhappily leave and separate.