Le jour se leve (1939)[The Criterion Collection]

Posted By: Someonelse
Date: June 23, 2011

Le jour se lève (1939)[The Criterion Collection]
DVD9 | ISO | NTSC 4:3 (720x480) | 01:30:01 | 5,66 Gb
Audio: French AC3 1.0 @ 192 Kbps | Subs: English
Genre: Crime, Drama, Romance | France

One of the great works of 1930s poetic realist cinema, Le jour se lève was Marcel Carné’s fourth collaboration with screenwriter and poet Jacques Prévert. In this compelling story of obsessive sexuality and murder, the working-class François (Jean Gabin) resorts to killing in order to free the woman he loves from the controlling influence of another man.

IMDB
Criterion

Also Known As: Daybreak

Le jour se lève (1939) is a part of Criterion's Essential Art House Boxset, Volume IV

An exemplar of French poetic realism, Marcel Carné's Le jour se lève (1939) turns a murder story into an evocative examination of a man trapped by circumstances beyond his control. In the script by Carné's main collaborator Jacques Prévert, Jean Gabin's working-class François shoots a man and holes up in his room, thinking back, in an impeccably structured flashback, to the events that brought him to that moment. Carné's camera does not shy away from the desperate, claustrophobic details of working-class life, yet the possibility for human connection gives François's existence hope, until the sadistic Valentin intervenes. The play of light and shadows as François waits out the night invests the surroundings' realistic drabness with a poetic sense of doom, matching the implacable fate that awaits the decent, tormented man. Trading on Gabin's image as a strong yet tender-hearted hero, Le jour se lève's François was seen as not just a man condemned by his class and human weakness but also the image of a country about to be overcome by the diabolical outside forces of World War II.
Lucia Bozzola, Rovi

Thing that this movie is best known and appreciated for is its unique way of storytelling. It's one of the very first movies that features a story that gets mostly told with flashbacks and it keeps switching back between past and present. This storytelling technique was later made more famous and popular by Orson Welles with his masterpiece "Citizen Kane".


But of course a movie requires a bit more than just some good storytelling, though it still remains a very important aspect. But this movie also has a great, quite simplistic movie, with still a lot happening in it, like only the French could make. It's a bit of a sweet love-story, that shows the events leading up to a fatal shooting. Some people will call this movie slow but hey, that was just the way movies were back in its days. But it's not like it's slow pace ever makes the movie a boring or dragging one, or at least not to me. It might had been the case if the movie had been a bit longer but with its running time around 90 minutes, it's simply a short movie to watch.


It's also one beautiful looking movie, that features some great cinematography and especially lighting. Shadows play in important part in the movie its visual look. Amazing thing about its cinematography is that the movie actually had 4 different cinematographers attached to it. No idea what the story is behind this but I guess that each used their own specialty for this movie, or some of them simply got fired or stepped up during production. Anyway, whatever was the case, it really didn't hurt the movie its visual look. Marcel Carné movies often were visually a real pleasure to watch and this movie forms no exception on this.


It's also a movie that quite heavily relies on its actors to tell its story and to deliver its great dialog, that got specially written by poet scenarist and songwriter Jacques Prévert. And this movie luckily had some great actors to work with. At the time Jean Gabin really was one of the best French actors. He really did his best work in the '30's and starred in some other classics such as "Pépé le Moko" and "La grande illusion" during the same decade.

Some great and unique storytelling equals a great and unique movie.
IMDB Reviewer

Download:




Interchangable links.
All Thanks goes to violator99!!!
Welcome to My Blog!

No More Mirrors.
Download full movie Le jour se leve (1939)[The Criterion Collection]
Subtitles (from opensubtitles.org)