Les bas-fonds

The Criterion Collection offers two different film versions of "The Lower Depths": one made in 1936 by Jean Renoir and another one made in 1957 by Kurosawa. The two directors never worked together on either film. In fact, they only met once in their lives, many years later. Both films are based on Russian writer Maxim Gorky's 1902 play, which describes life in a miserable slum where most characters have lost all sense of hope. Renoir deals with this serious subject matter in a much more humorous and amusing way than Kurosawa, whose film is slower, decidedly somber and a lot more difficult to digest. While Renoir's work takes the viewer in an out of the slums, Kurosawa doesn't allow one to see beyond the wretchedness of the underworld. Both films are great, but it was probably Kurosawa's which left a more durable and deeper impression on me.

Watch this movie if only to see the soul of Jean Gabin as it plays across his face. Louis Jouvet as the Baron is a marvel of understatement, of course. Beautifully filmed, the world of black and white film is a pleasure, in this movie, to watch. The scenes and the plot remind us of life not so long ago, a life that was harsh and brutal and filled with class divisions, you were wealthy or you were wretched. It made me want to read the original play by Maxim Gorky. Apparently Yvgeny Zamyatin, a long forgotten but brilliant Russian writer, contributed to the screenplay as well. Jean Gabin is a great actor, few people recognize his marvelous talents.

Jean Renoir's The Lower Depths is centered around a contrast in personalities. Jean Gabin, the great proletarian star, plays Pepel, a petty thief who remains jovial despite his restless desire to escape his deprived circumstances. While on a robbery job, Pepel meets The Baron, a disgraced nobleman, and the two strike up a friendship. These two men could not be more diametrically opposed, both in their social circumstances and their bearing. Pepel carries himself with the casual ease of a man who knows who he is, who's possessed of a basic trust in himself. The Baron, on the other hand, moves like he's perpetually running to the bathroom, his bowels - and his entire soul - afflicted with a painful case of tightness. The contrast between these two personalities, one open to life and the other closed off, is made all the more explicit by the differing acting styles of the two performers. No one was ever more natural than Gabin, with his understated charm and leonine presence. On the other side of the acting spectrum lies the extreme stylization of Louis Jouvet, who plays The Baron as a shambling collection of strained mannerisms. There's something elementally interesting about watching this clash of styles, this meeting of the naturalistic and the bizarrely theatrical. By some weird act of alchemy the two personalities, rendered in wildly different ways, mingle so pleasingly that we could scarcely ask for more.

Jean Renoir has made a highly-detailed, richly-textured humanist film out of Gorky's play. The story follows the various denizens of a lower-class boarding house lorded over by the slimy Kostylev, who's married to the jealous Vassilissa, who loves the restless Pepel, who's in love with Vassilissa's abused sister Natacha. The Baron, after losing his luxurious apartments over a money scandal, moves into the boarding-house, and alone among its inhabitants discovers bliss amidst the squalor. This might seem like a rather too glaringly pro-Socialist turn-of-events, the nobleman who becomes happy when he's brought low, but it works because Louis Jouvet is so subtly funny in the way he portrays The Baron's transformation. He makes The Baron seem a little bit teched, which helps to smooth out the character's ascent from suicidal desperation to grass-dozing, snail-fondling contentment. The acting overall is marvelous: Vladimir Sokoloff plays the old landlord Kostylev as a Dickensian creep; Suzy Prim brings a bitchy edge to the ambitious Vassilissa; and Junie Astor plays Natacha with a Cinderella-like down-trodden radiance. These characters find themselves embroiled in a scenario that's a bit more straight-forwardly melodramatic than in some of Renoir's other '30s films, but the plot barely matters what with all the physical detail and accomplished emoting - all orchestrated with a master's touch by Renoir, who tinges everything with a slightly sour irony. The staging is strikingly assured from start to finish, the camera-work possessed of an under-stated expressiveness that is purely Renoir. If the film falters anywhere compared to Renoir's other work it's in the slight sense of conventional melodramatic emphasis that creeps into some of the later scenes. The storytelling is sometimes casual and organic as in Renoir's masterpieces Grand Illusion and Rules of the Game, but there are other times when the plot-mechanics show through. Renoir normally smooths over these rough-spots, but in The Lower Depths he seems to have left them in, perhaps intentionally - perhaps meaning to give the film a certain conventional sense of climax. At any rate this hardly matters - the film is so richly textured and rhythmically satisfying that we can forgive Renoir for indulging in a few theatrical flourishes. This is one of the unquestioned classics of French poetic-realism.

Having seen Akira Kurosawa's 1957 version of the Maxim Gorky play prior to Jean Renoir's 1936 adaptation, I must admit that they couldn't be more different despite being rooted in the same material. Certainly the characters and situations are similar but the tone utilized by each of these world-class directors is so vast in comparison it bears mentioning. While Kurosawa insisted on focusing on these people's problems and their desperation to escape the futility of their world by remaining within the impoverished setting for the entire film, Renoir takes a lighter side by exploring the outside world, showing various methods of escape these characters dream of.

As with Kurosawa, the main focus of Renoir is the love triangle between the thief (played here remarkably by the subtle Jean Gabin) and two sisters, the elder shrill one being the landlord's wife and the other being rather sweet, gentle and somewhat innocent. To me, Renoir plays it better although it is certainly possible that Kurosawa meant specifically to showcase the love triangle as bleak as possible. As for Renoir, he gives all the characters something to say or reminisce about, usually love and death, life and happiness. The rhythm of the dialogue is so melodic and harmonious, it is one of the easiest listening experiences of any foreign film. The conversations between characters is brief but full of meaning, making for a terrific audience experience.

In short, both Renoir and Kurosawa's versions should be viewed although for different reasons. To see Kurosawa's is to see a master director able to balance several characters and story-lines all while maintaining the tone and decorum of futile loneliness. Renoir does the same, only with that particular French joie de vivre. Whatever is to your liking, rest assured each of these films will deliver.

Strictly speaking there are two alternate ways of making an adaption. One is to adapt the original text to the screen as it was written, the other is to modernize the text completely, thus giving it a new interpretation. These extremes locate to the opposite ends of the axle loyal-disloyal. Jean Renoir's "The Lower Depths" (1936) is far from the former, though it isn't particularly radical nor a modernization. One who is interested in the loyal fashion might wish to take a look at Kurosawa's 1957 version of the same material. The original material in question is Maxim Gorky's famous play of the same name which premiered in the early 1900's.

Gorky's play is often regarded as a hallmark of socialist realism, but it lacks the unambiguous moral message which we usually associate with the style. It's a play without a formal plot, paying more attention to characters and their relationships. Renoir has changed a lot and added new milieus, scenes, and minor characters. For example, Renoir gives more space for the friendship between the bankrupt baron and the thief, probably in order to highlight his view of humanity above social borders. Overall, Renoir has taken the most interesting characters of Gorky's play and chosen to focus on their drama rather than creating a film about a cave-like milieu and its relation to its various inhabitants. It is the spectator's choice whether this is for the better or worse, but Renoir's motives seem clear: he most likely wanted to give coherence to the story and thus enhance its ethical nature.

Due to these choices Renoir's "The Lower Depths" grows into a story about a thief (Jean Gabin) who falls in love with a girl. They live in the same slum -- a typical courtyard-ish milieu for Renoir's 30's films -- with the girl's sister, the thief's former partner, who is married to the owner of the slum apartments but wants to escape her marriage. Meanwhile the thief befriends a baron who has lost his social status and is now creating a new life in the lower depths.

Gorky's story is really ideal to the French Poetic Realism, but the film has replaced Gorky's pessimism with warm romance and an optimistic spirit. To me, whether this makes "The Lower Depths" better or worse is not an interesting question. What is interesting, on the other hand, is that it makes it different. Renoir once again manages to approach themes of friendship and solidarity with an authentic yet non-sentimental perspective. The final shot, which has righteously been compared to the famous finale of Chaplin's "Modern Times" (1936), expresses faith and hope, but not in excess, precisely because Renoir's image is indeterminate enough. Or, as Luka puts it, "If you believe in it, it is real."