Le Jour Se Leve

I find some of Marcel Carne's work a little too sentimental but this is a very good solid work with fine dialogue and some equally fine performances. I'm not a great fan the preference for stage built sets but everything works well here and the element of 'poetic realism' kept to a minimum. I much preferred this to the previous year's Hotel du Nord but was delighted to see the vivacious Arletty livening up the action once more. Jean Gabin is faultless as the murderer (no spoiler, its the first thing that happens in the film) but he has strong competition in his scenes with Jules Berry, who plays a sharp wide-boy type and conducts a small cabaret act with dogs doing his bidding. Berry is even better here than in The Crime of Monsieur Lange (1936) and helps to enliven a film which essentially describes the last hours of a murderer in a garret atop a tall boarding house. This is part romance, part melodrama and another of those French films where everybody seems to know what is about to happen in Europe and particularly at their border and a forbidding atmosphere to match. It has to be said however that it is clear the bungling police have yet to learn a more ruthless manner, but time will tell.