O Crime de Monsieur Lange

Most of the film is in flashback and as soon as this gets under way the film seems to move at such a pace I had trouble keeping up and along the way it only gradually dawned on me it was a comedy. So, once I had sorted that out and got used to the bold and challenging edits and dissolves the film was well under way and I was playing catch up. As has been pointed out by others, looking at this today it would seem that more time than necessary is given to convincing that the old boss is bad and that it would have been good to spend more time with the good times. However, we have to allow for the fact this is almost 80 years old and those early audiences would have needed that time to be fully convinced so that the ending could be accepted. Interesting, bold, amusing and entertaining with plenty of fulsome performances.

This and 'La Vie est a nous' from the same year, mark Jean Renoir's flirtation with Left-wing politics and very much reflect the prevailing mood of the time as the election of the Front Populaire had given the French a feeling of optimism. Suffice to say this euphoria was short-lived as the Socialist/Communist coalition proved utterly ineffectual.

Not only does 'Le Crime de Monsieur Lange' convey it's message with far greater subtlety than its companion piece, it's sheer exuberance is infectious.

Renoir has encouraged his cast to improvise which in conjunction with his use of continuous takes and deep focus camerawork gives the piece both immediacy and spontaneity. There is a distinctly collaborative feel here as many members of the cast as well as brilliant scénarist Jacques Prévert and composer Joseph Kosma belonged to the Left-wing 'October' Group.

The linchpin of the film is the personification of Good vs. Evil in the characters of Lange and Batala, superbly played by René Lefevre and Jules Berry. Lefevre is of course perfect casting as Everyman whilst Berry once again utilises his Mephistophelean persona to great effect and is the perfect combination of villany and charm. This immensely stylish artiste traditionally gave the appearance of improvising which stemmed from his being unable to remember his lines. On the distaff side there are enchanting performances from Florelle who gives a gorgeous rendition of Kosma's chanson and the always fascinating Nadia Sibirskaya, best known for her early films with her husband, director Dimitri Kirsanoff.

Renoir's fluid direction and the commitment of its participants have given us a thoroughly engaging and uplifting piece whilst on a purely technical level, the astonishing 360-degree pan when Lange 'executes' Batala is justly renowned.

It's not funny but its upbeat yet conflicted message of the hippie dream - 1930s style, plays with your emotions ultimately leaving you happier and more optimistic than before. It's not a simple story but it's put together so beautifully that it's easy to follow.

The picture this paints is of a mad muddled melange of dozens of colourful characters that somehow live as one giant happy utopian family. Once you've got used to the subtitles you're sucked into that world. Compared with American and English... and indeed most French films from this era what's remarkable about this is just how natural and realistic it is.

Besides 'Batala', the larger than life anti-hero, everyone else is just ordinary but not dull, they've all got real personalities, they're the sort of people we think we'd know if we were around then. M Lange himself, played by Rene Lefervre is convincing and endearing as the simple minded dreamer who writes the escapist Wild West comic stories. Stunningly beautiful Florelle is Lange's girlfriend who in this utopian world is not just subservient eye-candy, she's as much a part of society as any man. It's refreshing to see such an enlightened attitude in a 30s movie.

Everything about this fast-moving story seems so natural that you feel you're part of it. It's somewhere you can go to relax. M Renoir is brilliant at making his celluloid world where one man's fantasy awakens his neighbours' sense of community feel so real to us. By evoking a manufactured nostalgia and a desire for shared ideals he makes us, the audience feel like we're part of his story, which is our story. Like most good story tellers, Renoir leaves little gaps in the plot for us to insert our own characters into. This makes this very engaging.

Delightful! I'm a great fan of Jean Renoir, and I was very pleased to see this early piece as part of the excellent boxed set of 3 now available on DVD. It has its faults, but I love the way that he lets his actors "do their thing" and lives with the resultant somewhat chaotic mis en scene. The characters are great, with Jules Berry outdoing every caddish scoundrel I've ever seen on film (even including Terry -Thomas!). There's so much fun evident in the making of it, the rather slight fairy-story plot fills the bill perfectly, so it's like watching an early Hitchcock like "Young and Innocent". Lots of the same sense of fun finds its way into Renoir's later, more profound pieces like La Grande Illusion and Les Regles du Jeu, and help make those the more human by not being too sententious.

This film, shot in less than a month, contains some of the pleasures in Renoir's oeuvre. The fluid camerawork and the social satire have here, as elsewhere, rewards to yield, culminating in the 360 degree shot in the finale. Maybe the rashness accounts for flaws in the one-dimensional characters and the not so successful dramaturgy but the social messages about cooperatives, debt and exploitation are conveyed well.