Le jour se lève. 1939. France. Directed by Marcel Carné. Written by Jacques Viot and Jacques Prévert (dialogue). With Jean Gabin, Arletty, Jules Berry, Jacqueline Laurent. In French; English subtitles. DCP. 4K restoration of the complete, uncut version, carried out by Studiocanal at Eclair Laboratory. 93 min.
Factory worker Jean Gabin, holed up in a working-class apartment building in a desperate standoff with the cops, settles down to chain smoke till dawn…and then the flashbacks tell us what led him to this moment. For the first time in 75 years, Rialto’s 2014 reissue restored cuts made by the Vichy government (who later banned it outright) during WWII: a brief nude scene of Arletty, references to the police as “fascists,” and the removal of two Jewish craftsmen from the credits: director of photography Curt Courant and production designer Alexandre Trauner. New subtitles by Lenny Borger and Charlotte Trench capture the poetry of Prévert’s dialogue.