In the harbor of a dead city The man, with nothing but "disgusting appearance", wanders around the port area, trying to get money to escape from the country. It is obvious that he is “outlawed,” and everyone he turns to for help is trying to take advantage of this. Everyone needs money from a beggar. A lover, a prostitute and a little girl as restless as he is, his only protrusion he can cling to in a chasm-like city. Gradually, the truth about his past becomes known, but flashbacks in this case, say less about the man than his eyes.
In an interview with the magazine "Art of Cinema" Artur Aristakisyan, director and teacher of the Moscow School of New Cinema, called the Belgian film 1955. Seagulls Die in the Harbor is a turning point in the history of the festival movement, the first film to offer a new "reality package." Indeed, if you look at the Seagulls and compare them with the films produced in the 40s and 50s, you can feel some change in the movement of the camera and in the dramaturgy itself. We are dealing not just with an existential story about the existence of a person in a state of detachment from everything except dead industrial landscapes and similarly marginal people, but with a fundamentally different image of this detachment. Perhaps, if this film appeared ten years later, it would be completely devoid of dialogue and backstory of the main character, so eloquently the operator works, placing the characters in the dead space of Antwerp.
Today, the Seagull can be seen in full dubbing with the translation of the titles into Russian. It seems that in the Soviet Union this film was very much appreciated, and of all the products produced in capitalist Europe, by some miracle, it was the Seagulls that managed to break into domestic screens. This is surprising, given that the picture of Kepels, Miquils and Verhaverst is absolutely depressing and hopeless in the best traditions of Camus and Sartre. Perhaps the outstanding artistic merits of the film played a role, its ability to be illustrative material of how to shoot. On the other hand, with its help, it was possible to discredit the European way of life, they say, look where the Flemings led their device. All this speculation, however, does not in the least detract from the fact that “The Seagulls Die in the Harbor” turns out to be such a timeless black and white picture that could appear in Cannes now. The vision of the directors is very modern.
So, we know that “The Seagulls Die in the Harbor” is a landmark picture in the history of the development of film language and can be attributed to the existential direction. Very close in spirit here will probably be the films of Antonioni and early Wenders, existing in approximately the same time and cultural coordinates. Like other film classics, "The Seagulls" is forgotten by the majority of viewers, but this is one of those films that is worth remembering.