''LE CRIME DE MONSIEUR LANGE'' is a film that Renoir made as part of the Popular Front sympathies of the mid-30s when a co-alition of various organizations banded together in a show of collective solidarity under Leon Blum's leadership. It was this film which cemented Renoir forever after in the ranks of left-wing film-makers much to Renoir's bemusement years later and the film has been variously seen as a call-to-arms towards collective organization, as a film about the class conflict and oppression of workers and about creating a new social utopia. Such reductions do the film little justice because what seems an agitprop actually becomes murky.
LE CRIME DE MONSIEUR LANGE begins with a flashback(a device Renoir rarely used) at a Frontier Hotel(which frontier is unspecified) where a guard brings in a wanted poster informing the bar patrons about Amedee Lange(Rene Lefevre), a fugitive on the run from the law. Lange and his sweetheart Valentine(Florelle) arrive at the hotel and are recognized by the patrons. Valentine decides to explain why Lange committed the crime of the title as he sleeps from exhaustion in his room. The film then begins and is set in a courtyard(brought to vivid life by beautiful set design and superb circular panning shots) where writers of a publishing firm reside. This publishing firm is run by Batala(Jules Berry in a great performance), a corrupt fabulist of an employer who loves sleeping with his female employees and crushing the spirit of his males.
Berry's Batala is a caricature par excellence of a bourgeois businessman who will promote Lange's "Arizona Jim" stories in his magazine to make up for swindling his sponsors only to sabotage Lange's vision by inserting absurd advertisements into the mouth of his idealized and poorly researched Western hero. The film moves without a plot, smoothly scripted by the legendary poet-scriptwright Jacques Prevert(who worked with Marcel Carne and Jean Gremillon but this was his only work with France's best film-maker) driven by the actions and interactions between the workers of the publishing firm and their relationships with the girls who run the neighbourhood laundry. It's a portrait of class relationships like few others in film history making room for such expert caricatures as a old war veteran of an Indo-China conflict whose racism and colonialism is presented starkly.
The film's key movement happens midway when the publisher Batala seemingly perishes in a train crash, leaving the publishing firm in disarray...the sponsors want their money back, the workers want to keep their jobs. By mutual agreement and mutual interests they form a co-operative and in this phase, class distinctions fall apart, middle-class businessmen eat side by side with writers and businessmen, corrupt reactionaries alongside progressives, women with men. The publishing firm which had been in tatters because of Batala's pretentious detective magazine Javert rejuvenates itself by making pulp fiction of "Arizona Jim" novels, fumetti and even discuss making a film(although Lange disagrees noting the impossibility of faking the American West in France...).
The film's vision of co-operative society isn't one of classlessness but class co-ordination. The firm's major support comes from a dandy son of a bourgeois businessman, it passes into their hands through the aegis of an unconvincing distant relative of Batala who inherits the place when he "dies". Much of the film's strength comes from Renoir's effortless blocking of actors in group, with direct sound creating a palpable sense of place.
The film's finale climaxes in a stunning coup, where the line between Lange and Arizona Jim blurs. Batala returns from the dead to take over his firm and rub out the work done without him and in an act of inspiration, Lange commits himself to assassinate Batala. This act is carried in two successive spellbinding tracking shots. The first is a crane shot of a high angle which follows Lange walking through three rooms down a stairs, the other is a breathtaking semi-circular pan in which Arizona Jim Lange defeats the bad guy and rescues his girl and then of course heads to the frontier.
LE CRIME DE MONSIEUR LANGE begins with a flashback(a device Renoir rarely used) at a Frontier Hotel(which frontier is unspecified) where a guard brings in a wanted poster informing the bar patrons about Amedee Lange(Rene Lefevre), a fugitive on the run from the law. Lange and his sweetheart Valentine(Florelle) arrive at the hotel and are recognized by the patrons. Valentine decides to explain why Lange committed the crime of the title as he sleeps from exhaustion in his room. The film then begins and is set in a courtyard(brought to vivid life by beautiful set design and superb circular panning shots) where writers of a publishing firm reside. This publishing firm is run by Batala(Jules Berry in a great performance), a corrupt fabulist of an employer who loves sleeping with his female employees and crushing the spirit of his males.
Berry's Batala is a caricature par excellence of a bourgeois businessman who will promote Lange's "Arizona Jim" stories in his magazine to make up for swindling his sponsors only to sabotage Lange's vision by inserting absurd advertisements into the mouth of his idealized and poorly researched Western hero. The film moves without a plot, smoothly scripted by the legendary poet-scriptwright Jacques Prevert(who worked with Marcel Carne and Jean Gremillon but this was his only work with France's best film-maker) driven by the actions and interactions between the workers of the publishing firm and their relationships with the girls who run the neighbourhood laundry. It's a portrait of class relationships like few others in film history making room for such expert caricatures as a old war veteran of an Indo-China conflict whose racism and colonialism is presented starkly.
The film's key movement happens midway when the publisher Batala seemingly perishes in a train crash, leaving the publishing firm in disarray...the sponsors want their money back, the workers want to keep their jobs. By mutual agreement and mutual interests they form a co-operative and in this phase, class distinctions fall apart, middle-class businessmen eat side by side with writers and businessmen, corrupt reactionaries alongside progressives, women with men. The publishing firm which had been in tatters because of Batala's pretentious detective magazine Javert rejuvenates itself by making pulp fiction of "Arizona Jim" novels, fumetti and even discuss making a film(although Lange disagrees noting the impossibility of faking the American West in France...).
The film's vision of co-operative society isn't one of classlessness but class co-ordination. The firm's major support comes from a dandy son of a bourgeois businessman, it passes into their hands through the aegis of an unconvincing distant relative of Batala who inherits the place when he "dies". Much of the film's strength comes from Renoir's effortless blocking of actors in group, with direct sound creating a palpable sense of place.
The film's finale climaxes in a stunning coup, where the line between Lange and Arizona Jim blurs. Batala returns from the dead to take over his firm and rub out the work done without him and in an act of inspiration, Lange commits himself to assassinate Batala. This act is carried in two successive spellbinding tracking shots. The first is a crane shot of a high angle which follows Lange walking through three rooms down a stairs, the other is a breathtaking semi-circular pan in which Arizona Jim Lange defeats the bad guy and rescues his girl and then of course heads to the frontier.