Le jour se lève ("The Day Rises", or more idiomatically, "Daybreak"), is a 1939 film from France directed by Marcel Carne.
A shot rings out from inside what is later revealed to be a sixth-floor walk-up apartment. A man staggers out of the apartment, tumbles down a flight of stairs, tries to get up, and tumbles down another flight of stairs. Whether from the bullet or the stairs, after that, he's dead.
The man who shot him, a welder named Francois (Jean Gabin), hides inside the apartment. When the police show up moments later, Francois fires several shots through the door. An all-night siege watched by the whole neighborhood then unfolds, with Francois trapped inside the apartment and a legion of cops outside. While that plays out, we see in a series of flashbacks how things came to this, a story that starts with a love affair.
Tropes:
- Bad People Abuse Animals: Clara reveals that Valentin trained the dogs in his act by shaving their paws, burning those paws, and lashing the wounds with his whip.
- Driven to Suicide: After he runs out of cigarettes, and knowing that the cops are coming to get him, Francois shoots himself.
- Epic Tracking Shot: The apartment building was a set, all six floors of it, which allowed for a continuous tracking shot from the top to the bottom as Francois goes down the stairs.
- Face Framed in Shadow: How Francois is lit, with only his eyes visible, as one hail of bullets crashes through the door from the cops outside and another hail of bullets from the cops on the roof across the street shatters the window.
- Fanservice: A shot of Clara (played by the Only One Name actress Arletty) naked as she towels off in her bathroom after Francois arrives. Hollywood cinema wouldn't have nude scenes like that for another thirty years (and the scene was censored barely a year later in Vichy France).
- Friends with Benefits: What Francois seems to think he and Clara are, since he goes straight back to Françoise after finding out she's available. Clara pretends that she's of the same opinion but she has clearly fallen in love with Francois.
- Glorified Sperm Donor: Discussed Trope. After Valentin says that he's Françoise's father, Francois sneers at him for coming back and trying to play dad after twenty years. Subverted later when it turns out Valentin was lying.
- How We Got Here: Starts off with Francois murdering somebody, and then shows in a series of flashbacks how events came to this.
- Idiot Ball: You are Valentin, and you have gone to the apartment of Francois, your romantic rival. You know Francois loathes you. You reveal that you were going to kill Francois, which you demonstrate by pulling a loaded gun out of your coat pocket. You then put the gun on the table within reach of Francois. Then you taunt Francois with how much you enjoyed sex with his girlfriend. He picks up the gun and shoots you.
- Love Dodecahedron: Francois dates Françoise, who also goes out with Valentin, which leads Francois to start dating Valentin's assistant/girlfriend Clara.
- Rage Against the Reflection: Near the end, a despondent Francois smashes the mirror in his apartment.
- Significantname Overlap: In-Universe, part of how Francois breaks the ice with Françoise, by noting that they have masculine and feminine versions of the same name.
- Staircase Tumble: Valentin falls down the stairs outside Francois's apartment, tries to stagger up at the fifth-floor landing, then staggers down another flight of stairs.
- Take This Job and Shove It: An argument between Valentin and Clara leads to her quitting their vaudeville act in the middle of a show.
- A Tragedy of Impulsiveness: In the end it turns out that it was nothing more than a sudden fit of rage that led Francois to shoot Valentin.
- Vaudeville: Valentin and Clara were partners in a dog-training vaudeville act. She quits in the middle of a performance.
- Visual Title Drop: At the very end of the film, as Francois lies dead on the floor while tear gas fills the apartment, the first light of daybreak shines through the window.
