UdK Film Series Poetic Cinema

LE JOUR SE LÈVE (Daybreak, Marcel Carné, F 1939; with Jean Gabin, dialogs by Jaques Prévert and production design by Alexandre Trauner, Nov. 3, 10 and 17). The film starts with a crescendo, followed by white writing on a black ground that immediately says it all: "A man has murdered. Locked up in his room, he remembers the circumstances that made him a murderer." An evening, a night, a morning, and three long flashbacks: time is inflected, prolonged and compressed: the last hours of the factory worker Francois until he shoots himself before he is shot by someone else. The protagonists are orphans, and the film is about the freedom into which they were placed, like into a straightjacket. A film against humanism and for poetic form. Three times a month, three different topics: modern acting, modern dialogs, modern buildings. (Heinz Emigholz)