LE JOUR SE LÈVE

LE JOUR SE LÈVE

LE JOUR SE LÈVE

Introduction

Le Jour se lève (or Daybreak) is a 1939 French film directed by Marcel Carné and written by Jacques Prévert, based on a story by Jacques Viot. It is considered one of the principal examples of the French film movement known as poetic realism.

The film was remade as The Long Night (1947), with Henry Fonda in the Gabin role. In 1952, it was included in the first Sight and Sound top ten greatest films list.

Plot

Marcel Carne and Jacques Prevert's classic of French poetic realism stars Jean Gabin in one of his most famous roles as Francois, a rough, barrel-chested loner who hides out in his apartment awaiting for the police to arrive. Francois has killed a man in a crime of passion, the slimy lothario Valentin (Jules Berry). As he listens in the darkness of his Normandy apartment to the police sirens closing in and getting louder, he recalls the two women that he loved -- Francoise (Jacqueline Laurent) and Clara (Arletty) -- and the evil Valentin, who stole both their hearts and forced Francois into this melancholy plight. The film was later re-made in Hollywood as The Long Night. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide.

Review

An exemplar of French poetic realism, Marcel Carné's Le jour se lève (1939) turns a murder story into an evocative examination of a man trapped by circumstances beyond his control. In the script by Carné's main collaborator Jacques Prévert, Jean Gabin's working-class François shoots a man and holes up in his room, thinking back, in an impeccably structured flashback, to the events that brought him to that moment. Carné's camera does not shy away from the desperate, claustrophobic details of working-class life, yet the possibility for human connection gives François's existence hope, until the sadistic Valentin intervenes (Kael 1968). The play of light and shadows as François waits out the night invests the surroundings' realistic drabness with a poetic sense of doom, matching the implacable fate that awaits the decent, tormented man. Trading on Gabin's image as a strong yet tender-hearted hero, Le jour se lève's François was seen as not just a man condemned by his class and human weakness but also the image of a country about to be overcome by the diabolical outside forces of World War II. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide

Discussion

A superb example of French poetic realism, and probably the finest of the several collaborations between director Marcel Carne and screenwriter Jacques Prevert. Jean Gabin is Francois, a tough, romantic loner who barricades himself in his apartment after committing a crime of passion, the murder of the lecherous Valentin (Jules Berry). While police surround his Normandy home, Francois remembers (in flashback) the two women he loved--Francoise (Jacqueline Laurent) and Clara (Arletty)--and Valentin, the man who wooed both. Every facet of the film's production values is expertly realized, but perhaps the most awe-inspiring is the set design of Alexandre Trauner--a re-creation of a city street corner decorated with Dubonnet ...