MOVIEmeter
SEE RANK
Up 42 this week

Daybreak (1939)
"Le jour se lève" (original title)

 -  Crime | Drama | Romance  -  29 July 1940 (USA)
7.8
Your rating:
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 -/10 X  
Ratings: 7.8/10 from 2,894 users  
Reviews: 22 user | 16 critic

After committing a murder, a man locks himself in his apartment and recollects the events the led him to the killing.

Director:

Writers:

(original scenario), (dialogue)
0Check in
0Share...

User Lists

Related lists from IMDb users

a list of 1555 titles created 11 months ago
 
a list of 250 titles created 4 months ago
 
a list of 1006 titles created 7 months ago
 
a list of 2916 titles created 16 May 2011
 
a list of 1001 titles created 07 Feb 2012
 

Connect with IMDb


Share this Rating

Title: Daybreak (1939)

Daybreak (1939) on IMDb 7.8/10

Want to share IMDb's rating on your own site? Use the HTML below.

Take The Quiz!

Test your knowledge of Daybreak.
1 nomination. See more awards »

Videos

Photos

Learn more

People who liked this also liked... 

Breathless (1960)
Crime | Drama
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 7.9/10 X  

A young car thief kills a policeman and tries to persuade a girl to hide in Italy with him.

Director: Jean-Luc Godard
Stars: Jean Seberg, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Daniel Boulanger
Crime | Drama | Thriller
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 7.6/10 X  

Charlie Kohler is a piano player in a bar. The waitress Lena is in love with him. One of Charlie's brother, Chico, a crook, takes refuge in the bar because he is chased by two gangsters, ... See full summary »

Director: François Truffaut
Stars: Charles Aznavour, Marie Dubois, Nicole Berger
Badlands (1973)
Crime | Drama
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 7.9/10 X  

Based on the Starkweather-Fugate killing spree of the 1958, in which a fifteen-year-old girl and her twenty-five-year-old boyfriend slaughtered her entire family and several others in the Dakota badlands.

Director: Terrence Malick
Stars: Martin Sheen, Sissy Spacek, Warren Oates
The Big Risk (1960)
Crime | Drama | Romance
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 7.4/10 X  

Abel Davis is a criminal, hunted in Italy. The police are closing in, so he and his pal Raymond arrange to flee back to France with Abel's wife, Thérèse, and their two young sons. Abel and ... See full summary »

Director: Claude Sautet
Stars: Lino Ventura, Sandra Milo, Jean-Paul Belmondo
Fireworks (1997)
Crime | Drama | Romance
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 7.8/10 X  

A police officer leaves the force in the face of harrowing personal and professional difficulties. Spiraling into a depression he makes questionable decisions.

Director: Takeshi Kitano
Stars: Takeshi Kitano, Kayoko Kishimoto, Ren Ohsugi
Read My Lips (2001)
Crime | Drama | Romance
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 7.3/10 X  

She is almost deaf and she lip-reads. He is an ex-convict. She wants to help him. He thinks no one can help except himself.

Director: Jacques Audiard
Stars: Vincent Cassel, Emmanuelle Devos, Olivier Gourmet
Action | Drama | Thriller
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 7.4/10 X  

Convicted felon Nikita, instead of going to jail, is given a new identity and trained, stylishly, as a top secret spy/assassin.

Director: Luc Besson
Stars: Anne Parillaud, Marc Duret, Patrick Fontana
Crime | Drama | Romance
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 7/10 X  

A debonair, adventuresome bank executive believes he has pulled off the perfect multi-million dollar heist, only to match wits with a sexy insurance investigator who will do anything to get her man.

Director: Norman Jewison
Stars: Steve McQueen, Faye Dunaway, Paul Burke
Crime | Drama | Romance
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 6.9/10 X  

An obese, embittered nurse doesn't mind if her toupee-wearing boyfriend romances and fleeces other women, as long as he takes her along on his con jobs.

Director: Leonard Kastle
Stars: Shirley Stoler, Tony Lo Bianco, Mary Jane Higby
Mona Lisa (1986)
Crime | Drama | Romance
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 7.3/10 X  

George, after getting out of prison, begins looking for a job, but his time in prison has reduced his stature in the criminal underworld. The only job he can find is to be a driver for ... See full summary »

Director: Neil Jordan
Stars: Bob Hoskins, Cathy Tyson, Michael Caine
Crime | Drama | Romance
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 7/10 X  

A brief fling between a male disc jockey and an obsessed female fan takes a frightening, and perhaps even deadly turn when another woman enters the picture.

Director: Clint Eastwood
Stars: Clint Eastwood, Jessica Walter, Donna Mills
Heaven I (2002)
Crime | Drama | Romance
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 7/10 X  

A woman takes the law into her own hands after police ignore her pleas to arrest the man responsible for her husband's death, and finds herself not only under arrest for murder but falling in love with an officer.

Director: Tom Tykwer
Stars: Cate Blanchett, Giovanni Ribisi, Remo Girone
Edit

Cast

Complete credited cast:
...
François
Jules Berry ...
M. Valentin
...
Clara
Mady Berry ...
La concierge
René Génin ...
Le concierge (as Genin)
Arthur Devère ...
Mr. Gerbois (as Arthur Devere)
René Bergeron ...
Le patron du café (as Bergeron)
Bernard Blier ...
Gaston
Marcel Pérès ...
Paulo (as Peres)
Germaine Lix ...
La chanteuse
Gabrielle Fontan ...
La vieille dame dans l'escalier
Jacques Baumer ...
Le commissaire
Jacqueline Laurent ...
Françoise
Edit

Storyline

Francois, a sympathetic factory worker, kills Valentin with a gun. He locked himself in his furnished room and starts remembering how he was led to murder. He met once Francoise, a young fleurist, and they fell in love. But Francoise was gotten round by Valentin, a dog trainer, a machiavellian guy... Written by Yepok

Plot Summary | Add Synopsis

Plot Keywords:

murder | gun | dog | factory | factory worker | See more »


Certificate:

TV-PG | See all certifications »
Edit

Details

Country:

Language:

Release Date:

29 July 1940 (USA)  »

Also Known As:

Daybreak  »

Company Credits

Production Co:

 »
Show detailed on  »

Technical Specs

Runtime:

| (Janus print)

Sound Mix:

(Western Electric Wide Range Sound System)

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1
See  »
Edit

Did You Know?

Trivia

While not the first film to use dissolves to represent flashbacks, it was considered too new a method in the language of cinema that the films producers' insisted on pretitle cards to avoid any confusion. See more »

Quotes

M. Valentin: You're the type women fall in love with . . . I'm the type that interests them.
See more »

Connections

Featured in Un compositeur pour le cinéma: Maurice Jaubert (1985) See more »

Frequently Asked Questions

This FAQ is empty. Add the first question.

User Reviews

 
Before the flood.
9 August 2001 | by See all my reviews

That was one of the last French masterpieces of the thirties just before the war.Marcel Carné was accused of pessimism and the movie was quickly forbidden by the military censorship that used to say in 1940:"if we've lost the war,blame it on "Quai des Brumes""(Carné's precedent movie.The director answered:"you do not blame a barometer for the storm"). "Le jour se lève " is,if it's possible,darker than its predecessor. From the very beginning,the hero,a good guy (Gabin) is doomed,his fate is already sealed,because the tragedy has already happened .That's why the movie is a long flashback.The memories are brought back on the screen with an astounding virtuosity by some elements of the set (the teddy bear for instance).Only three main characters outside that of Gabin,the evil one (Berry who was to play the devil in "les visiteurs du soir "1942),the lucid one (Arletty) and the ambiguous one (Jacqueline Laurent).The latter provides

the only flaw of the movie:Laurent acts Françoise as the innocent pure girl,however Carné leaves no doubt about her relations with Berry. A remake was made by Anatole Litvak with Henry Fonda ,Barbara Bel Geddes and Ann Dvorak (who must have been studying Arletty's acting for a long while),called "the long night" with an absurd happy end. Needless to say,it's the French Carné movie that you've got to see!


42 of 63 people found this review helpful.  Was this review helpful to you?

Message Boards

Recent Posts
subtitles very disappointing brucedgo
European Distribution? jenn-74
French dialogue Fleapit
OMG kimmylita
Discuss Daybreak (1939) on the IMDb message boards »

Contribute to This Page

Create a character page for:
?