Daybreak

Le Jour se lève (Daybreak, 1939) is a French poetic-realist drama directed by Marcel Carné — watch it online on iFILM. Jean Gabin plays François, a factory worker who has shot a man dead and bolted himself inside his apartment. The police have the building surrounded. All he can do is remember.

The film runs backwards in everything but clock time. Through a series of flashbacks, we learn about two women — the guileless Françoise and the world-weary Clara — and about Valentin, a dog trainer played by Jules Berry with the kind of slithering charm that makes your skin crawl. Each memory tightens the grip; by the last reel, you know exactly how this ends, and you cannot look away.

Carné made this a year before the German occupation of France, and there is something in the air of the film that feels like a whole country sensing what is coming. It belongs to the same current as Renoir's films of the era — but darker, more closed-in. Stream Daybreak (1939) online on iFILM.