Down a foggy, desolate road to the port city of Le Havre travels Jean, an army deserter looking for another chance at life. Fate, however, has a different plan for him, when acts of both revenge and kindness turn him into front-page news. The film starkly portrays an underworld of lonely souls wrestling with their own destinies, a quintessential example of poetic realism, one of the classics of the golden age of French cinema.

A deserter from the French military drifts into a small town, where he falls for a troubled young woman.