| SOLEIL, NOIR : Marcel Carné's 'Le jour se lève ' / 'Daybreak' (1939) [5/10] |
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| Sunday, 18 March 2007 | |
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Night in the city: factory-worker François (Jean Gabin) is a cornered man. He shot a person dead in his garret flat atop a multi-storey tenement, and the police are closing in fast. As he stoically awaits his fate, François ponders the circumstances which have led to his grim situation: romantic entanglements with youthful, teddybear-hugging gamine Françoise (Jacqueline Laurent) and jaded woman-of-the-world Clara (Arletty), both of them - in some way - involved with cruel, cynical vaudevillian (or should that be 'vaudevillain'?) Valentine (Jules Berry). Director Carné and his four cinematographers (Philippe Agostini, Andre Bac, Albert Viguier and an uncredited Curt Courant) do their energetic utmost to distract us from the shortcomings of what's fundamentally a rather thin excuse for a plot. The lighting and camerawork are consistently striking - especially during the indoor sequences - and many of the techniques must have seemed groundbreaking back in 1939. Likewise much of the language is rather spicier than one might expect for the era, the gruffly amiable François's argot packed with harsh, colloquial swear-words such as cul and fout le camp (roughly "arse" and "fuck off", though these are left coyly untranslated in most English-language subtitles). Gabin is typically engaging and sympathetic as the hapless François, with Arletty (particularly good in an underwritten role) and Laurent providing an effective study in contrasts as his paramours. But the film's love triangle - actually more of a 'quadrangle' - never really comes into proper focus, so episodic and halting is the flashback-heavy screenplay by Jacques Viot (story) and Jacques Prévert (dialogue). So while the film occasionally manages to evoke a potent atmosphere of moody, doomy fatalism, it doesn't really provide much substance to justify its surfeit of ever-so-Gallic style. Neil Young 18th March, 2007 LE JOUR SE LEVE : [5/10] : aka Daybreak : France 1939 : Marcel CARNE : 93 mins (approx; cinema timing) seen at The Star and Shadow cinema, Newcastle-upon-Tyne (UK), 18th March 2007 - public show (ticket-price £4.00) ... previous Jigsaw Lounge review, based on March 2003 viewing ... more on the Star and Shadow |
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