[4] Henri, owner of a busy brasserie and cinema in Cherbourg, takes the easy-going Odile who lives with him to the funeral of her father in Port-en-Bessin.

He waits for her in a café where he is taken with a new waitress called Marie, unaware that she is Odile's tough little sister.

He buys an old trawler in Port-en-Bessin, which he visits often to oversee its restoration and to pursue Marie.

A phone call from there about his boat warns Henri that Marie has been threatening to throw herself into the sea.

The film had a significant impact on Gabin's star personae, shifting from the doomed man established in pre-war Poetic Realism to the more mature, assured and powerful figure he would make his hallmark over the next two following decades.