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Le Jour Se Leve
aka Daybreak
Screening: Monday 18 Jun, 6:30pm
France
1939
Director: Marcel Carn
Production co: Vauban Productions, Sigma
Screenplay: Jacques Prvert. Based on a story by Jacques Viot
Cinematography: Philippe Agostini, Andr Bac, Albert Viguier
Editor: Ren Le Hnaff
Sound: Armand Petitjean
Music: Maurice Jaubert
Franois: Jean Gabin
Valentin: Jules Berry
Franoise: Jacqueline Laurent
Clara: Arletty
Concierge: Ren Gnin
His wife: Maddy Berry
Gaston: Bernard Blier
Paulo: Marcel Prs
Inspector: Jacques Baumer
Caf owner: Ren Bergeron
Old woman: Gabrielle Fontan
Gerbois: Arthur Devre
Singer: Germaine Lix
In French with English subtitles
93 mins
B & W
35mm (1.37:1)
PG cert
ADMISSION STRICTLY MEMBERS ONLY
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 posters that is one of the most memorable ever filmed. More poetic than realistic, it is very much a film of a mood, but despite the optimism of its ironic title, melancholy and despair predominate. This inherent irony was then mirrored by real-life events as the film was released not long before Paris became an occupied city, and its citizens, like Francois, were left with no way out. Recognizing the similarities, the Vichy government banned the picture as "demoralizing." Remade in Hollywood as The Long Night. - TV Guide
Possibly the best of the CarnÈ-PrÈvert films, certainly their collaboration at its most classically pure, with Gabin a dead man from the outset as his honest foundry worker, hounded into jealousy and murder by a cynical seducer, holes up with a gun in an attic surrounded by police, remembering in flashback how it all started while he waits for the end. ñ Tom Milne, Time Out Film Guide
One of the finest examples of French poetic realist cinema, Marcel CarnÈ's fatalist classic offers up the dead ends, despair, and thwarted love of most American film noirs, with a moodñdrenched romanticism contributed by poet Jacques PrÈvert and a sense of doom contributed by historical circumstances (it was one of the last French films made before Germany's invasion of France). - Jason Sanders
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Presented with the generous support of the French Embassy
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