126: Daybreak

Le Jour Se Lève 

FR  93m  Dir: Marcel Carne  Key Cast: Jean Gabin

Audiences have become used to films not telling their stories in a linear narrative order but it was unusual enough in 1939 for Daybreak to have a written explanation at the start of the film

The film opens with Francois (Jean Gabin) shooting a man behind closed doors and then refusing to leave the room when the police arrive. He then reflects on how he got to this point- he had begun to date florist's assistant Francoise (Jacqueline Laurent) who turned him down for narcistic dog trainer Valentin (Jules Berry). An embittered Francois then began to date Valentin's former assistant Clara (Arletty) but he was still in love with Francoise. 

The Vichy Government actually banned this film in 1940 on the basis it was demoralizing. They had a point. The film is viewed as one of the principle examples of the French film movement known as "poetic realism". This is a more aesthetic version of realism with an air of fatalism and this film undoubtedly has the latter. 

Francois is a decent guy who is broken by love and by the dastardly Valentin who is a bastard who had it coming. The structure of the film works really well because at the start it's hard to have any sympathy for Francois killing a man in cold blood but by the end you are completely on his side. The story seems to suggest that love is doomed to fail and will case our demise in one way or another. 

Jean Gabin is superb in this film, charming and romantic in the flashbacks and a broken man in the present. The film could easily have seen Francois tell his story to another person but it's somehow more effective to have him alone, though it relies on Gabin's ability to act without any other actors present. Fortunately Gabin nails it and these scenes are full of emotion as Francois tries to get his head around what has happened. 

Bleak as hell but in the most beautiful of ways.