Directed by Marcel Carné • 1939 • France
Starring Jean Gabin, Jules Berry, Arletty

One of the defining works of 1930s poetic-realist cinema, the fourth collaboration between director Marcel Carné and screenwriter and poet Jacques Prévert is a gripping story of obsessive sexuality and murder starring the great Jean Gabin as an honest laborer who resorts to killing in order to free the woman he loves from the controlling influence of another man. Unfolding through flashbacks that bristle with a sense of inexorable doom, LE JOUR SE LÈVE (a.k.a. DAYBREAK) is a searing working-class tragedy that anticipates the dark themes and shadow-laden visual style that would come to be known as film noir.