''Le jour se lève'' (, "The day rises"; also known as ''Daybreak'') is a 1939 French film directed by Marcel Carné and written by

Jacques Prévert Jacques Prévert (; 4 February 1900 – 11 April 1977) was a French poet and screenwriter. His poems became and remain popular in the French-speaking world, particularly in schools. His best-regarded films formed part of the poetic realist moveme ...

, based on a story by Jacques Viot. It is considered one of the principal examples of the French film movement known as

poetic realism Poetic realism was a film movement in France of the 1930s. More a tendency than a movement, poetic realism is not strongly unified like Soviet montage or French Impressionism but were individuals who created this lyrical style. Its leading filmm ...

. In 1952, it was included in the first ''

Sight & Sound ''Sight and Sound'' (also spelled ''Sight & Sound'') is a British monthly film magazine published by the British Film Institute (BFI). It conducts the well-known, once-a-decade ''Sight and Sound'' Poll of the Greatest Films of All Time, ongoing ...

'' top ten greatest films list.

Synopsis

Foundry worker François (

Jean Gabin Jean Gabin (; 17 May 190415 November 1976) was a French actor and singer. Considered a key figure in French cinema, he starred in several classic films including ''Pépé le Moko'' (1937), '' La grande illusion'' (1937), ''Le Quai des brumes'' ...

) shoots and kills Valentin ( Jules Berry). François then locks himself in his apartment. He is soon besieged by the police, who fail in an attempt to shoot their way into the room. As they regroup to decide how to apprehend him, François begins to reminisce on how he came to be in this predicament. Several months earlier, he had begun to date Françoise (Jacqueline Laurent), a florist's assistant. They bonded over the similarities in their names and the fact that they both were orphans. François fell in love with her and hoped to marry her, but she turned him down in order to have a relationship with the older Valentin, a narcissistic, manipulative dog trainer. Embittered, François began a relationship with Clara (

Arletty Léonie Marie Julie Bathiat (15 May 1898 – 23 July 1992), known professionally as Arletty, was a French actress, singer, and fashion model. As an actress she is particularly known for classics directed by Marcel Carné, including '' Hotel du N ...

), Valentin's former assistant in his dog show. Over the next few weeks, Clara fell in love with François, but he preferred to have only a casual relationship with her; she knew it was because he had continued to see Françoise, with whom he was still in love. One day, Valentin told François that he was in fact Françoise's father; she was the product of a youthful dalliance. Later that afternoon, François asked Françoise if Valentin was telling the truth. She denied it, saying that Valentin habitually made up stories. But she also confessed that she was falling in love with François and wanted to be with him. Valentin confronted François in his apartment. He admitted to having lied about being Françoise's father and brandished a gun with which he had intended to shoot François. Instead, he taunted François with allusions to his sexual encounters with Françoise. Enraged, François picked up the gun and shot Valentin. Alone in his room and out of cigarettes, François realizes he has no hope of escape. He does not know that Françoise, delirious with guilt, is now being tended to by Clara. The police decide to throw tear gas into François's room in an attempt to subdue him. But just before they do, François commits suicide by shooting himself in the heart.

Cast

as François * Jacqueline Laurent as Françoise * Jules Berry as Valentin *

as Clara *

Arthur Devère Arthur Devère (24 June 1883 – 23 September 1961) was a Belgian film actor. He appeared in more than 50 films between 1913 and 1956. Selected filmography * ''L'agent Rigolo et son chien policier'' (1913) * ''Flup chasseur'' (1920) * ''L ...

as Gerbois *

Bernard Blier Bernard Blier (11 January 1916 – 29 March 1989) was a French character actor. He was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where his father, a researcher at the Pasteur Institute, was posted at the time. Life and career His rotund features and ...

as Gaston * Marcel Pérès as Paulo * Germaine Lix as singer *

Georges Douking Georges Douking (born Georges Ladoubée; 6 August 1902 – 20 October 1987) was a French stage, film, and television actor. He also directed stage plays such as the premier presentation of Jean Giraudoux's ''Sodom and Gomorrah'' at the Thé ...

as blind man (uncredited)

Distribution

''Le jour se lève'' was released in France in June 1939 and shown in the US the following year. In France, however, the film was banned in 1940 by the

Vichy government Vichy France (french: Régime de Vichy; 10 July 1940 – 9 August 1944), officially the French State ('), was the fascist French state headed by Marshal Philippe Pétain during World War II. Officially independent, but with half of its terr ...

on the grounds it was demoralizing. After the war's end, the film was shown again to wide acclaim. In 1947, it was again suppressed when

RKO Radio Pictures RKO Radio Pictures Inc., commonly known as RKO Pictures or simply RKO, was an American film production and distribution company, one of the "Big Five" film studios of Hollywood's Golden Age. The business was formed after the Keith-Albee-Orph ...

wanted to remake the film in Hollywood (as '' The Long Night''). The company acquired the distribution rights of the French film and sought to buy up and destroy every copy of the film that they could obtain. For a time it was feared that they had been successful and that the film was lost, but it re-appeared in the 1950s and has subsequently stood alongside '' Les Enfants du paradis'' as one of the finest achievements of the partnership of Carné and Prévert.

Home media

In 2014, a restored version of the film was released as a region-B Blu-ray disc by Studio Canal. This version reinstates dialogue and shots (including a nude Arletty) that had been deleted by Vichy censors.

References

External links

*
''Le jour se leve''
at the

TCM Movie Database Turner Classic Movies (TCM) is an American movie-oriented pay-TV network owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. Launched in 1994, Turner Classic Movies is headquartered at Turner's Techwood broadcasting campus in the Midtown business district of At ...