LE JQUR SE LEVE Movie Review

Daybreak

A lone man (Jean Gabin) sits locked behind the door of a rooming-house apartment as police downstairs discover the body of the man he has just murdered. As the police attempt to arrest him, Gabin remembers in flashback the lifelong series of events that inexorably led to this most desperate of moments. A brilliantly structured and stunningly designed example of “poetic realism,” Le Jour Se Lève (Daybreak) is the product of an inspired collaboration between director Marcel Carné and screenwriter Jacques Prévert, who years later would be the principal forces behind the great Children of Paradise. Le Jour Se Lève is a riveting and emotionally complex piece of storytelling that expands as we watch it into a fully formed vision of humanity at the mercy of forces beyond its control. The look of the film is both dreamlike and gritty; Alexander Trauner's set designs and Curt Courant's cinematography are completely at one with the movie's haunting, disturbingly claustrophobic tone. Arletty, Jacqueline Laurent, and Jules Berry co-star with Gabin. The magnificent score is by Maurice Jaubert (L'Atalante), who died in World War II combat the following year. (In 1975, 35 years after Jaubert's death, François Truffaut revived interest in the composer by brilliantly using older Jaubert works to score The Story of Adele H..)

NEXT STOP … The Crime of Monsieur Lange, Children of Paradise, Crimes and Misdemeanors

1939 89m/B FR Jean Gabin, Jules Berry, Arletty, Jacqueline Laurent; D: Marcel Carne. VHS HMV, GVV, HHT