The film follows Lingling, a young country girl from a rural fishing village, as she moves to the glittering city of Shanghai with her boyfriend Zhang.
Sold to a corrupt boss who intoxicates and rapes her by her own sister, Lingling is forced into prostitution before eventually becoming a martyr for the oncoming revolution.
It was a star vehicle for Li Lili in the early stages of her career, and the seventh film of director Sun Yu, who was the best-known auteur of Shanghai cinema during the 1920s.
The narrative openness encourages and allows for cinematic audiences to develop their own political interpretations and, in this film, for 'left wing' or 'pro-CCP' messages to emerge from its mise en abyme.
The film begins in a tranquil rural fishing village where a young, innocent girl named Lingling (played by Li Lili) lives.
Lingling's journey vividly illustrates how an innocent country girl is degraded and commodified upon entering the city, becoming a mere tool of exchange in a male-dominated society.
While the former embodies innocence and virtue, the latter represents the complexities and challenges of modern urban life, including exploitation and moral decay.
In a 2014 article published in Journal of Chinese Cinema, Victor Fan analyzes Sun Yu's use of the concept of homo sacer – those who can be killed without legal consequence – as a narrative device.
In Daybreak, the character Lingling is portrayed as a homo sacer whose sacrificial death is meant to awaken the masses and redeem the nation.