Foregone Conclusions

Film: Le Jour se Leve (Daybreak)
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on kick-ass portable DVD player.

Sometimes, you just know what’s going to happen. Marcel Carne’s Le Jour se Leve (Daybreak) is one of those movies. You know the basic plot within the first couple of minutes, and you know from this point on that you’re not going to have a happy ending. There’s simply no way that a happy ending is possible with this one.

We start with a murder. A man named Valentin (Jules Berry) is shot, and he stumbles out of an apartment and takes a tumble down the stairs. The body is discovered and the police are summoned to the apartment of Francois (Jean Gabin), a factory worker. But Francois has barricaded himself into the apartment and will not open the door. In fact, he takes a couple of potshots at the police, who run for assistance. In the meantime, Francois tries to remember what brought him to this particular state.

Naturally, what brings him here is a woman, or rather a pair of women. The first is Francoise (Jacqueline Laurent), who works at a florist. They meet when Francoise is attempting to deliver flowers to the factory in which Francois works. The two click immediately because of the similarities of their names (the “e” on the end makes it feminine) and the fact that both were raised in an orphanage. Francois would like to take the relationship further, but Francoise says she can’t.

What Francois discovers is that Francoise has a relationship with Valentin, who is a dog trainer and performs frequently on stage. His assistant, Clara (Arletty) has chosen this night to make a clean break with Valentin, who promises the moon and never delivers. In their conversation, Francois realizes that Valentin has something of a hold on Francoise, but he does not confront her. Instead, he starts a relationship with Clara, almost to spite Valentin and to get back at Francoise.

And so the two men battle over the two women. Both Francois and Valentin want both women, and neither will budge. Valentin spins a tale about being Francoise’s father, a tale that proves to be a lie and further shows the underhanded nature of his character. Eventually, Francois realizes that he truly wants to be with Francoise, and will do anything to protect her, hence the opening few minutes of the film.

Throughout all this, we frequently flash forward to the present and Francois barricaded into his room. A horde of police show up and take positions both inside the apartment building and outside on the roofs of the buildings nearby. These police aren’t too keen on bringing in Francois alive based on the vast number of bullets they fire into his room.

And really, the ending here should be pretty obvious. With the actions of the police established fairly early into the film, it’s evident that no one aside from Clara and Francoise are too concerned about bringing this criminal to justice in court. Aside from an unbelievable deus ex machina, there’s no way that Francois is coming out with both his life and his freedom intact.

For all that it purports to be about love, Le Jour se Leve is more about possession than anything else. Both men are willing to kill to possess the two women, and are willing to throw away their lives and futures to get what they want. While Francois is the one who actually pulls the trigger, Valentin shows up at the apartment for the confrontation with a gun and ready to kill. So the question to me becomes one of whether or not the men really love the women—Francoise in particular—or simply want to conquer someone else for possession rights. The film would have us believe that Valentin’s love is more possession while Francois’s love is more pure. However, Francois’s actions with Clara seem to belie that. From what I see, both men are equally guilty.

This is not a happy experience. Le Jour se Leve is right in the heart of the French Poetic Realism movement featuring proletarian protagonists, film noir-style lighting and sets, and ultimately downbeat endings. If that comes as a spoiler, it shouldn’t. As I’ve been saying, the downbeat is pretty obvious from the moment those first shots ring out—no one is walking out of this one with a smile except perhaps for the police.

Le Jour se Leve is stylish and smart, and plays like a real drama for the most part. The biggest problem for me to overcome in terms of verisimilitude is the actions of the police, who seriously pump about 50 rounds into Francois’s apartment in an effort to end the siege. Maybe this is how the French police acted in the pre-war years, but it’s the sort of action that ends in a class action suit, suspensions, and paperwork headaches for the police force. But for this, the value here is how much Carne reflects real life, or at least potential real life.

Why to watch Le Jour se Leve: A film that is a match for Carne’s later Les Enfants du Paradis.
Why not to watch: The ending is a foregone conclusion.

Under the Worst of Circumstances...

Film: Les Enfants du Paradis (Children of Paradise)
Format: DVD from Bettendorf Public Library through interlibrary loan on laptop.


Some movies demand to be seen because of the direction, the plot, or the actors. There are plenty of truly great movies out there worth watching because of the story they tell and the quality of what is on the screen. Others demand to be seen because of the history behind them. Les Enfants du Paradis is such a film. While the story is beautiful and the acting excellent, in any other circumstances this would be simply a great epic romance, a French Gone with the Wind. It is the story of two star-crossed lovers who try their entire lives to be together only to be kept apart by the wiles and absurdities of others. It would still be great, but it wouldn’t be the incredible testament to the art of film that it is.

Garance (Arletty, [one name, like Cher or Madonna]) is a woman with a little too much time on her hands (she also bears a remarkable resemblance to my daughter’s ballet teacher). She is accosted by a pretentious actor named Frederick Lemaitre (Pierre Brasseur) who decides to pursue her on a whim. She brushes him off, but it’s a guarantee that the two will come together again at some point. Garance also spends time with Pierre-Francois Lacenaire (Marcel Herrand), a scribe, thief, and fence with the heart of a murderer. He claims that Garance is the only woman for whom he has no contempt, and she claims to visit his scribe’s shop only from boredom.

Her true love, however, is Baptiste (Jean-Louis Barrault), a mime who is despised by his father in the Funambules Theater. She encounters him when she is accused of stealing a watch from a man standing next to her—Baptiste saw the whole crime, and acts it out in mime to an appreciative crowd. She gives him a flower in thanks, and the two are quite obviously smitten with each other.

Into this, we add several other important players. First is Nathalie (Maria Casares), a player at the Funambules who is madly in unrequited love with Baptiste. A constant player roving through the lives of all off these people is Jericho (Pierre Renoir), a thief and criminal as well as a scrounge. He gives himself a variety of nicknames, claiming this is what others call him: Medusa for his gaze, Woe-is-me for his hard lot in life, Rat for his scrounging, and so on. Everyone comes together when Frederick is also hired at Funambules.

And so we follow the lives of these people in their life in and around the theater and Paris in the 19th Century. Baptiste is captured by Nathalie; Garance is taken in by Edouard Count de Montry (Louis Salou), and both are trapped in loveless marriages, separated from each other. The more than three hour running time is the story of how they try to find happiness and each other throughout their lives.

So, it’s certainly a sweet story, but it’s really nothing special. This sort of romance isn’t that hard to find in the annals of film and literature. It’s a classic tearjerker of a tale, the sort of thing that you watch with a box of tissues, or you do if you’re a middle-aged spinster.

What makes this film noteworthy is the situation surrounding its filming. This is a huge, three-hour epic with a cast of thousands of extras filmed during the Nazi occupation of Paris directly under the noses of the German occupiers. Filming took place over 18 months. The production designer and composer of the musical score were both Jewish, and had to contribute their materials through intermediaries while in hiding. One actor was pulled away from the project because he was accused of collaboration after the occupation end. Several producers were either investigated by the Nazis or pulled out when Italy fell. Many of the cast members and workers on the film were involved in the Resistance. In short, this grand film, this beautiful statement of love, joy, art, and theater, was created under the most brutal, terrible circumstances imaginable. In many ways, the creation of this film was the inspiration for another great film, Le Dernier Metro.

This is what makes this film so special. There is no greater testament to the power of art or the desire to create than this film. While it may be only a good, possibly great film on its own, the circumstances of its creation make it one of the most powerful and beautiful things ever placed on celluloid. You owe it to all involved in its creation to watch it. They deserve it.

Why to watch Les Infants du Paradis: It demands to be seen.
Why not to watch: Three hours of French romance.