Marcel Marx, a former author and a well-known Bohemian, has retreated into a voluntary exile in the port city of Le Havre, where he feels he has reached a closer rapport with his people, serving them in the honourable, but not too profitable, occupation of a shoe-shiner. He has buried his dreams of a literary breakthrough and lives happily within the triangle of his favourite bar, his work, and his wife Arletty. When fate suddenly throws in his path an underage immigrant refugee from the darkest Africa and at the same time his wife becomes seriously ill and is bedridden, Marcel once more has to rise against the cold wall of human indifference with his innate optimism and the unwavering solidarity of the people of his quarter as his only weapons.