Before film noir there was poetic realism: a French film movement that focused on disillusioned, down-and-out loners and losers on the outside edges of society. Masterpieces like Jean Vigo's L'Atalante (1934), Julien Duvivier's Pépé le Moko (1937), and Jean Renoir's La Grande Illusion (1937) stand as some of the greatest triumphs of poetic realism and French cinema. Six years before directing his most famous film, Children of Paradise (1945), Marcel Carné directed Le Jour Se Lève, one of the last great examples of poetic realism. Told largely in flashback, the film follows foundry worker François (Jean Gabin) as he whittles away his last hours barricaded in his room after killing a man. His victim, Valentin, had come to his room to mock him over his domination of the two women that François loved: the ingenue floral shop worker Françoise and the stage performer Clara. As François awaits his final showdown with the police, he reflects upon the events that led to that fateful day. Le Jour Se Lève is a tragic cinematic poem, lyrically swaying from one memory to the next with the cynical detachment of a man who has nothing left to lose. It is a grim, bleak, and hauntingly beautiful piece of film-making.
8/10
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