Le soleil se couche à l'aube

The dialogue in this film is so dreadful, that after 20 minutes of the film, you are rooting for the execution to take place, despite the obvious innocence of the protagonist. Hackneyed writing will always get that kind of result. The script here is terrible. However, believe it or not, the lead actor and actress are even worse than the script. The protagonist, the intended innocent victim of the execution, gives one mundane line after another about his failures in life. After twenty minutes of this, one roots for the execution to take place. The female lead is even worse; bouncing from comatose to hysterical every ten minutes or so. I wish I could find something nice to say about this film, but when you start rooting for an innocent man to be fried, you know you are watching the wrong film. Avoid this turkey.

"The Sun Sets at Dawn" is a B-movie. Back in the 1930s-50s, B-movies were meant as a cheap second film in a double-feature. Because they were made quickly and inexpensively, they usually clocked in at about 55-70 minutes, had mostly unknown actors and are often today thought of as bad films. Well, the last part is definitely not true--as some B- movies manage to convey an excellent story and are quite entertaining. This is definitely the case with "The Sun Sets at Dawn", as it's extremely effective and entertaining--even without the frills of an A- picture.

When the film begins, the state is about to execute a young man. He's been convicted of murder and still insists he's not guilty. This much isn't unusual--but what is unusual is that everyone that seems to meet him and his girlfriend believes this as well. But the governor won't stop the scheduled death and it looks pretty hopeless. Can something manage to stop this possible miscarriage of justice?

The movie excels in many ways. The performances are awfully good, the writing quite nice as well (though some today might find some of it a bit heavy-handed) and the story really makes you think twice about the morality of the death penalty--especially in cases where it was never 100% proved that the condemned is actually guilty. Well made and worth seeing.

Incidentally, somehow this film slipped into the public domain and is available for a free download at archive.org.

Offbeat dark drama concerning the hours before the execution of a young man protesting his innocence. Walter Reed gives a fine performance as the chaplain ministering to the man to be executed who gradually believes in his innocence. There is some unusual direction as the story moves back and forth from the young man protesting his situation in the cell to the newsmen holed up in a greasy spoon trying to substantiate his guilt. Noir regulars Percy Helton, King Donovan and Charles Arnt make up some of he newsmen. No doubt this is somewhat of a protest film against capital punishment but it never overplays this angle. There are some good plot twists that makes the movie more interesting. The acting is uniformly good and the film is a worthwhile viewing if you can wade through the depressing subject matter.

This is an unusual film in many ways, but most striking to me is that the director, Paul Sloane, a silent film auteur who had made the transition to sound and then inexplicably vanished from the industry for more than a decade, suddenly reappeared to write and direct what is essentially a silent movie (with conventional 1950-era sound), starring quite a cast of silent era actors.

Almost everything in this movie is antique -- the large cast of older men as reporters, the elderly "Pops" who runs the diner, the frozen-in-amber look of the sets for the warden's home and his office in the prison -- and this elegiac effect is heightened by the continual references to times gone by and the display of worn-out and bypassed items, such as the out-of-date Post Office "Wanted" posters that Pops has learned to love. Even the direction of the unknown young "Girl" is reminiscent of Murnau's direction of Janet Gaynor in 1927's "Sunrise."

If you look up the bios of the actors, you will see that at least half of them were over 50 and some were in their late 60s. Did Paul Sloane just come out of hibernation, hire all of his old colleagues and have one last go at it? I don' think we will ever know -- but for whatever reason he did it, the film is very satisfying if you think of it as a "silent film with sound."

I rated it an 8, which i rarely do for "B" films, because although it was filmed with minimal sets and although i tend to downgrade films that feature boyishly handsome priests called "Padre," (sorry, just a quirk of mine), this movie is unique, like a carton of mint-condition New-Old-Stock porcelain dolls found in the sealed-off back room of a diner on a sound stage somewhere in Post-War Los Angeles.

Don't be afraid to try it. Just love it for what it is.

Time seems to stand still in this sluggish suspense snorer that could use some juice from the old sparky awaiting to fry the wrong man in The Sun Sets at Dawn. Even at a slim 71 minutes it still manages to grind interminably along as it trudges from one doom and gloom scene to the next.

It looks like Bill is about to be executed for a murder he did not commit. His girl, the warden, a priest know better and suffer along with him as the hours count down. At the bus depot down the road cynical reporters assemble with guards from the prison having supper, a prison trustee and as luck would have it the real killer making himself conspicuous. While the reporters unravel the case through speculation the trustee tries to get the the guards attention about the convenient presence of the killer but they'll have none of it - neither should the audience.

Dawn auteur Paul Sloane's first casualty is credulity with its ridiculous staging and premise. The dialog is trite with the tortured scenes between Bill and the priest cloying and stilted. The "Front Page" press box lacks the snappy patter and is strictly second string though it does offer up the best of what can be found in Sloane's disagreeable montage stew.