In Le Jour se lève we can see two different ways of progressing from one shot to another. In the sequence set in the present, the shot changes are made very quickly with wipes. A wipe is the substitution of one image by another trough a sort of sweep across the screen. […] Marcel Carné used these because he wanted to show the difference between the parts of the action set in the present and those set in the past. Each scene set in the present is, on the other hand, cut o from the events evoked in Jean Gabin’s mind by an exceptionlly long dissolve.

What does this dissolve correspond to? First it corresponds in a physiological way to the dreaming state. e eye stares, the pupil dilates, the image of objects on the retina is blurred. The lack of voluntary attention prevents the lens from focussing. Secondly the dissolve is suitable for superimposition technique. In general, superimposition is used to convey the imaginary quality of an event or character. It is often employed to represent ghosts. Since the object and characters have a transparent quality, the spectators interpret them as only half true, part dream and part reality. e very long dissolves in Le Jour se lève come across as the tangible symbols of the purely imaginary images to follow. During the whole of the transition period we have visible evidence that our reality is in some way chancing. We are taken from the solid, concrete present to a different reality, one found only through memory. Ask the public how many of them understood from the start, right from the first dissolve, thet Gabin was going back into his past. Probably a few spectators would have understood, but not at once. Filmic means of expression are less explicit and have fewer nuances than literary means. us it was decided to add to the soundtrack of the original print, before general release, a superimposed voice which represents in a way Gabin’s conscience and which proclaims in sepulchral tones: “And yet it seems like only yesterday… do you remember?” this short phrase, designed to eliminate any doubt in our minds, did not appear in the original shooting script.

André Bazin, Le Jour se lève… Poetic Realism, in Le Jour se lève: A Film by Jacques Prévert and Marcel Carné, Simon & Schuster, New York 1970