David Fincher's adaptation of Gillian Flynn's bestseller Gone Girl dominates the multiplexes this week, and probably next. But on the eve of Yom Kippur I wanted something of Jewish flavour and found it in Marcel Carné's Le Jour Se Lève.
Regarded widely in art house circles as a classic example of France's poetic realism in cinema, the 1939 film has been restored by StudioCanal and Éclair for its 75th anniversary and they've done an impressive job. Told mainly in flashback - a unique narrative device at the time - the film, written by Jacques Prevert, opens with the protagonist, Francois (Jean Gabin), fatally shooting sleazy showman Valentin (Jules Berry).
Naturally it is a crime of passion - this is France after all - but we only discover this as Francois endures an overnight police siege and while hiding in his room recalls the events that led to the murder.
Gabin (who played Jean Valjean in the 1958 film version of Les Misérables) is bewitching as the good guy who first falls in love with a pretty florist (Jacqueline Laurent) and then with Clara (Arletty), Valentin's stage assistant. Both women care for Francois, but he underestimates the influence the manipulative and vicious Valentin has over them.
Set among the tenements of a working-class Normandy suburb, it is the look and feel of the film that makes it such a vivid experience.
That was all down to the talents of cinematographer Curt Courant and production designer Alexandre Trauner.
Both these men went on to have successful careers in cinema, the former collaborating with Hitchcock while the latter designed sets for such hits as Billy Wilder's Witness for the Prosecution (1957) and Luc Besson's Subway (1985).
When Le Jour Se Lève was released, however, the Vichy government's censors forced Carné to modify certain scenes and remove the names of Courant and Trauner from the opening credits as they were known to be Jews and immigrants. The director did as requested, only for the film to then be banned and branded "demoralising". Ironically, as we atone for our own sins, cinema reminds us of the sins committed against us.
