In 1995 the Pordenone (Italy) Silent Film Festival presented the largest retrospective of Chinese silents ever assembled for a Western audience. Matt Severson wrote in Film Comment: "Daybreak was, for me, the most intoxicating film of the festival. This sweeping historical epic portrays (director Sun Yu's sprightly muse) Li Lili as a village girl who gets caught in (the first stirrings of the Nationalist movement.) The film has an exquisite visual flair that has evoked comparisons with Borzage and Mizoguchi for its integration of high romanticism and violent political intrigue. There's a scene in which Li contemplates memories of her lost innocence while dreamily riding a boat down a river strewn with waterlilies that strongly resembles similar scenes from Sunrise, A Day in the Country, and Ugetsu. It is Sun Yu's accomplishment that this scene, if not the entire film, fits right beside those masterworks. He and his cinematographer, Zhou Ke, incorporate audacious tracking shots, rain-drenched set design, and high melodrama with incomparable artistry."