Daybreak by Marcel Carné (1939)

Daybreak begins at the end of the story. During a violent quarrel in a hotel room François shoots Monsieur Valentin, who staggers out of the room and dies as he tumbles down the stairs. When the police arrive, François fires at them through the closed door. We don’t enter the room and join the troublemaker until the police have retreated and taken cover. The police rapidly surround the building, question the inhabitants, and then begin to fire shots through the window of the room. Trapped in this room, on the top floor of a six-story hotel, without the slightest hope of escaping, François takes refuge in his memories. During the ensuing night, after preventing the police from getting into his room by blocking the door with a heavy wardrobe closet, he chain-smokes as he recalls the principal events which have lead to this tragic set of circumstances.

François is a worker in a metallurgy factory in the Amiens suburbs. He falls in love with Françoise, a pretty little florist who had grown up, like him, in a public orphanage. He wants to marry her, but she demurs. The same evening that he makes his proposal, he follows her to a cabaret where she has gone to meet Valentin, a much older man who performs an act with trained dogs. At the bar François meets Clara, Valentin’s assistant and former mistress. Disgusted with his treatment of her, she has abruptly resigned and left him after a three-year love affair. When her former lover takes her to task after his performance, François comes to her defense, thus making an enemy of Valentin. Terribly disappointed to discover the affair between Françoise and Valentin, François becomes Clara’s lover while continuing to see Françoise.

After several months, during which François refuses to move in with his mistress Clara, Valentin shows up to quarrel with François about the worker’s continuing relationship with Françoise. During their conversation in a café Valentin informs François that he is Françoise’s father, a status which gives him certain “rights.” Françoise later flatly denies that Valentin is her father, explaining that he is just someone who enjoys lying. François gets back together with Françoise, who gives him a broach she had been wearing, as a token of her love. When François informs Clara of his intention to break off their affair, she spitefully shows him that she has the same broach as Françoise. Valentin has the habit of offering one to each woman he sleeps with…

Back in his room in the present François cries out in rage and despair and rejects the appeals from a crowd of friends gathered beneath his window in the fear that he might jump. He doesn’t even see Françoise, who calls out his name and collapses in the street. Clara has her brought to her hotel room, where she watches over her.

As dawn begins to break François retreats once again into his memories, recalling Valentin’s arrival in his room obstensibly to continue their argument over François’s romance with Françoise. In fact he has come to taunt François, provoking him with offensive comments about his worker’s status and making crude allusions to his seduction of Françoise. Outraged, François grabs a revolver which Valentin has placed on the table and shoots him in the stomach. This incident brings us back to the murder at the beginning of the film and thus to the present, where the action will continue to the end.

In Clara’s room Françoise becomes delirious, speaking incoherently of the love she shares with François. Policemen on the roof of the worker’s hotel crawl toward his window with teargas canisters. François commits suicide by shooting himself in the heart just before one of the policemen tosses a canister through the window. The hero’s alarm clock rings while the teargas fills the room. Dawn breaks.