Le Jour se Leve (Daybreak)

One of the peaks of pre-war French cinema, this collaboration between director Marcel Carne and writer Jacques Prevert makes a bookend with the supreme Les Enfants du Paradis at the end of the war. The quintessence of “poetic realism,” the film exudes a gloom that seems prescient, as good man Jean Gabin is subverted by the evil seducer Jules Berry into murder and suicide. Set design and music weave a spell that enhances superior performances all round, including Arletty and Jacqueline Laurent who round out the self-destructive foursome. The film is told in flashback as Gabin holes up in his garret under police siege after shooting Berry, and we learn why he was driven to that desperate act. He and Laurent are orphans who discover each other when she wanders by mistake, while trying to deliver flowers, into the shop where he works at sandblasting machine parts. They fall sweetly in love, but consummation is prevented by the machinations of vile dog-trainer Berry, whose assistant Arletty winds up with Gabin on the rebound. Though revolving around simplistic dualities, the film spins a complex web of evocation. (1939, IFC/T, r.) *7+*