Le jour se leve (Daybreak) 1939 - A nice example of French poetic realism

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0031514/
IMDB rating: 7,8

Director: Marcel Carne
Main Cast: Jean Gabin, Jules Berry, Arletty, Bernard Blier, Jacqueline Laurent

"Marcel Carne's Le jour se leve/Daybreak turns a murder story into an evocative examination of a man trapped by circumstances beyond his control. In the script by Carne's main collaborator Jacques Prevert, Jean Gabin's working-class François shoots a man and holes up in his room, thinking back, in an impeccably structured flashback, to the events that brought him to that moment. Carne's camera does not shy away from the desperate, claustrophobic details of working-class life, yet the possibility for human connection gives François's existence hope, until the sadistic Valentin intervenes. The play of light and shadows as François waits out the night invests the surroundings' realistic drabness with a poetic sense of doom, matching the implacable fate that awaits the decent, tormented man. Trading on Gabin's image as a strong yet tender-hearted hero, Le jour se leve's François was seen as not just a man condemned by his class and human weakness but also the image of a country about to be overcome by the diabolical outside forces of World War II." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/le-jour-se-l%C3%A8ve-v28642

DVD links:

Le quai des brumes (Port of shadows) 1938 - Hauntingly sad French masterpiece

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0030643/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
IMDB rating: 7,6

Director: Marcel Carne
Main Cast: Jean Gabin, Michel Simon, Michele Morgan, Pierre Brasseur

"Adapted from a novel by Jacques Prevert, Port of Shadows (Quai des brumes) stars that eternal victim of society, Jean Gabin. Having deserted the French army, Gabin ducks into a back alley and meets the lovely Michelle Morgan. He becomes her champion by taking on her evil 'protectors' (Michel Simon, Pierre Brasseur), but loses his last bid for freedom - and his life - in the process. Irredeemably gloomy, Port of Shadows was a primary influence in the 'film noir' genre pursued by Hollywood in the 1940s. The film was the first of three collaborations between writer Jacques Prevert and director Marcel Carne, culminating in the incomparable Les Enfants du Paradis (1944)." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/port-of-shadows-v106403

DVD links:

La bete humaine (The human beast) 1938 - An excellent, moody adaptation of Zola's novel

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0029957/
IMDB rating: 7,8

Director: Jean Renoir
Main Cast: Jean Gabin, Fernand Ledoux, Simone Simon, Blanchette Brunoy

"Jean Renoir's masterful adaptation of the Emile Zola novel of heredity and fate has been cited as both a reflection of the fatalistic mood in France in the face of Nazi Germany's aggression and as a blueprint for many postwar film noirs. It's also part of a magnificent mini-run in Renoir's career, preceded by Grand illusion and followed, two films later, by Rules of the game. The film begins and ends with a train hurtling noisily down a track, the camera shooting from either the engineer's point of view or from the very front of the locomotive, and the sensation is one of imminent danger. Jean Gabin's Jacques Lantier is a man haunted by his family's history of alcoholism; although he is able to stay away from booze, he is still prone to seizures and blackouts. He accepts his fate as a damaged man, even rejecting love from a young woman who promises to be patient with him. Instead, his involvement with the self-absorbed Séverine (Simone Simon) and her jealous husband, the stationmaster Roubaud (Fernand Ledoux), accelerates his sense of doom. The Roubauds are concealing a crime, and Jacques becomes their accomplice, falling in love with Séverine, whom he rightly senses is a damaged soul like himself. 'I always got what I wanted', Séverine says in reference to her godfather, but we soon learn that the old man extracted something in return. Renoir sets much of the action on the train or in the railroad yards, an all-male preserve that becomes a trysting spot for Jacques and Séverine's first sexual encounter. Almost every scene is perfectly orchestrated, none better than a later post-coital conversation in which Jacques shows an unhealthy interest in how the Roubauds committed their crime and then Séverine sighs, 'If my husband were out of the way...'
Fans of Double indemnity, The postman always rings twice, Human desire (Fritz Lang's take on Zola's story), and Body heat will recognize that line, as well as Séverine's desperate attempt at a dance hall to brush off the persistent Jacques, 'We have no future'." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/la-b%C3%AAte-humaine-v27862

DVD links:

Pepe le Moko 1937 - A great influence on film noir

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0029453/
IMDB rating: 7,7

Director: Julien Duvivier
Main Cast: Jean Gabin, Gabriel Gabrio, Saturnin Fabre, Fernand Charpin, Mireille Balin

"Pepe le Moko (Jean Gabin) is a well-known criminal mastermind who eludes the French police by hiding in the Casbah section of Algiers. The movie is among the most influential films of the 20th century, a precursor of both 1940s film noir and late 1940s neo-realism. The film quickly generated international acclaim, and it was responsible for director Julien Duvivier's leaving Europe to make films in Hollywood. The film's greatest strengths are its atmospheric visual richness and strong lead performances from Gabin and Mireille Balin. There have been several remakes (like the U.S. version Algiers), though the film's influence has been much wider than that. The setting, ambience, and some of the characters of Casablanca, for example, owe much to Pepe le Moko, as do numerous English-language crime films. Duvivier's work in Hollywood was of moderate success, as were his later European films, but Pepe le Moko represents the high point of his career."

DVD links:

La grande illusion (Grand illusion) 1937 - One of the greatest films ever made

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0028950/
IMDB rating: 8,2

Director: Jean Renoir
Main Cast: Jean Gabin, Dita Parlo, Pierre Fresnay, Erich von Stroheim

"A 'poetic realist' masterpiece, Jean Renoir's Grand illusion eloquently revealed the absurdity of war in a story about escape from a World War I German prison camp. One of the first sound film masters of the mobile camera, Renoir structured his film through a series of long takes in deep focus, moving gracefully yet subtly among the characters to embed them in rather than isolate them from their environments. With this observational style, Renoir examined the 'grand illusions' threatening Europe in the 1930s and humankind in general: war and the artificial distinctions of class and nation that drive it. Each of the four main characters stands for a particular social stratum, with their metaphorical places revealed through realistic details of conversation and quotidian behavior. This emphasis on the reality of daily life in prison camps, complete with dialogue in several languages and easygoing camaraderie between prisoners and guards, suggests the core of humanity shared by all, regardless of class, language, and cultural divisions. The poetic final image of an invisible border hidden beneath an expanse of white snow punctuates Renoir's benevolently humanist stance. Grand illusion was a hit in the U.S. as well as in France, even receiving an Oscar nomination for Best Picture; it also received a special prize at the 1937 Venice Film Festival despite being banned in Italy and Germany. Regularly listed as one of the best films ever made, Grand illusion's power remains undiminished, while the impact of Renoir's audacious style can be seen from the work of Orson Welles to the French New Wave." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/grand-illusion-v20464/

DVD links: