Sam Christian (mostly) speaks our language here with this excerpt from his review of the Kino release of Marcel Carné's PORT OF SHADOWS:

,b>Port of Shadows is one of those progenitors of Film Noir where you can see all of the connective tissues from Poetic Realism into Noir proper. I do feel like the French, however, have a better grasp of what Noir should be. For one, they have Jean Gabin star in them because he has the perfect face for these films, and I personally can't get enough of him. The major connective tissues between Noir and Port of Shadows is the focus on the criminal underclass and their stories. However, I much prefer these French Poetic realism films because they understand the class divide and the systems that lead these characters down their less-than-savory paths.

Many of us would argue that Carné fully moves into film noir here (and continues apace with his followup LE JOUR SE LEVE). In fact the term "film noir" was invented in response to PORT OF SHADOWS, not by Nino Frank eight years later after watching a batch of American noir. Certain right-leaning critics hated the pessimistic undercurrent in PORT OF SHADOWS and coined the term as a pejorative for the darkening mood in French film that was growing, both amongst films now lumped into the nebulous "poetic realism" appellation and policiers (Chenal's L'ALIBI, among others) as the Popular Front began to lose political momentum and the chill of fascism was circulating through Europe.

Sam also suggests that noirs with more of a balance between hard-boiled (he calls it "nihilsm"--but that really comes later...) and melodrama, which is precisely what I cover in Chapter 3 of my companion volume to THE FRENCH HAD A NAME FOR IT series, which anatomizes and expands on much of what he summarizes in the text that follows the excerpt.

His only real stumble is suggesting that Godard's BREATHLESS is somehow channeling poetic realism as part of its "subversive" pastiche of film noir. As is the case with so many folk, that's giving Jean-Luc a good bit more credit than he deserves. Belmondo'a character is not dopily modeling himself on Jean Gabin, but on Humphrey Bogart.

In any event, the Kino version of PORT OF SHADOWS is highly recommended...