Le Jour Se Lève
| Le jour se lève | |
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Film poster
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| Directed by | Marcel Carné |
| Produced by | Robert and Raymond Hakim |
| Written by |
Jacques Prévert Jacques Viot |
| Starring |
Jean Gabin Jules Berry Arletty |
| Music by | Maurice Jaubert |
| Cinematography |
Philippe Agostini André Bac Albert Viguier Curt Courant |
| Edited by | René Le Hénaff |
| Distributed by | AFE |
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Release date
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Running time
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93 min. |
| Country | France |
| Language | French |
Le jour se lève ([lə ʒuʁ sə lɛv], "The day rises"; also known as 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.
In 1952, it was included in the first Sight and Sound top ten greatest films list.
Foundry worker François (Jean Gabin) 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 bond 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), 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 realized he had no hope of escape. He does not know that Françoise, delirious with guilt, was 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.
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Wikipedia