Jean Gabin was widely praised by critics for his nuanced, dryly funny performance as a middle-aged Cherbourg restaurateur falling slowly in love with his mistress's young sister in a French seaside village. Their affair is captured informally and realistically, without fanfare. The New Yorker's critic wrote: “All in all, La Marie du port is a delight. It is subtle, witty, and civilized. Marcel Carné's leisurely direction is distinguished by a fond attention to the development of character and an obvious love for the unspoiled beauty of people and places. M. Gabin has achieved that rare trick, limited to the best of actors, of playing a role so convincingly that one cannot conceive of him in any other part.” For Nathaniel Dorsky, “It is a story film whose very elements, moment to moment, are expressed by the visual possibilities of cinema and montage. The very space of the narrative is purely cinematic.”