Le Jour Se Lève

"Masterly study in human solitude" Sunday Times. "I have seen it four times and it still seems to have no flaw" News Chronicle. A murder is committed in the first shot. The glance travels slowly up the façade of the tall tenement. A shot rings out. Jules Berry tumbles and somersaults down two flights to plop in front of the blind stranger timidly exploring with his stick, finding only a limp resistance at his feet. The story tells, in a series of flashbacks, just why the killer has barricaded himself into his attic room, sheltering in some corner from the police bullets, staring through the splintered windows at the crowds gathering far below in the cobbled square, his mind struggling painfully back to the events which brought him to this pass; his meeting with the girl, his suspicions of her, his encounter with the smooth sadist who fascinates her, and the last wild burst of fury which makes him a murderer. The action ranges far beyond the walls of the room yet is shaped together by them. It is a tale of sex relationships - Gabin genuinely in love with the florist but carrying on an affair with a hard-boiled woman of the world; Jules Berry as the fanatic masochist, the showman who must give pain for its own sake, even to himself, fighting with all the desperation of an aging man, wounded in his vanity. As an interpreter of this kind of man, exhibitionist and sadistic, Jules Berry has no equal. Jean Gabin, too, is at his best as the simple fellow goaded into killing his tormentor. Thanks to his effortless power, and Carne's superb direction, the film keeps its painful grip until it dies away in one of the most memorable closes ever devised for the cinema.