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Crime de Monsieur Lange, Le (1936)

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8 out of 8 people found the following comment useful :-
Has all of Renoir's pace and vivacity, and intriguing politics, 13 October 1999
Author: allyjack from toronto

It takes a while to locate one's bearings in this work, although that speaks to its emotional and thematic complexity. The film has the constant pace and vivacity and glee that is (stereotypically?) associated with Renoir - the film is something of a romantic whirl, with the interconnections of men and women are beguilingly dramatized in all their fleeting glory. Even the scenes with the wicked boss have an initial joie de vivre. Lange himself retains a restrained calm at the heart of it all - until he comes to illustrate the normal man who takes a desperate, self-sacrificing stand for the good of others. Although idealistic, his action resonates when offset against the explicitly cartoonish heroism of the Arizona Jim character (which we see embodied in some epically corny tableaux), and the impact thrives from being based in a muscular evocation of left-wing collectivist sympathies (a strand that comes over heavily in the almost idyllic scenes of things after the demise of the capitalist - with workers happy and lovers unfettered; although I found the very end of the film a bit puzzling).

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3 out of 3 people found the following comment useful :-
More Than Propaganda, 16 September 2005

Author: bartman_9 from Belgium

When Batala, the owner of a failing publishing firm is presumed dead, the inhabitants of the surrounding courtyard take over. The collective is very successful, until Batala returns and wants to take control again.

This is one of Renoir's films made for the Front Populaire, a cartel of leftist parties that was briefly in power during the thirties. It's clear where the movie's sympathies lie, but what makes Le Crime de Monsieur Lange interesting is how it deviates from the party line: it has a hero who dreams, not of socialism, but of the individualism of the gunmen from the Far West, the collective is all-inclusive and non-political, taking aboard the wealthy ne'er do well Meunier as well as the reactionary Colonel and then there's the character of Batala (Jules Berry): in this kind of film you would expect him to be a symbol of exploiting capitalism for us to despise. Yes, he is cynical and manipulative, but as a capitalist, he is a failure: he's always hiding from creditors, thinking up hare brained schemes to keep his business afloat and he doesn't so much exploit the poor as take advantage of naiveté (if you sign a contract without reading it, you really shouldn't complain about finding commercial messages in your cowboy stories). Whatever he does, he remains a charming rogue, which adds complexity to what could have been simpleminded propaganda. The crime of Mr. Lange is committed against an individual, not a symbol.

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2 out of 3 people found the following comment useful :-
Perfect, a kind of masterpiece on a few cups of coffee, 15 August 2005

Author: beagleface from United Kingdom

Hard to believe this was made in 1934. It is further ahead than movies of today by 100 years, with ideas, ironies, and characters worthy of fine literature. A classic, made by a serious filmmaker. Maybe its most distinctive feature is its seeming absolute effortlessness. It moves along at an extremely fast pace, and if you don't watch and listen, you'll miss some gems. The villain is magnificent and done with such accuracy and a complete lack of stylized fiendishness that you realize Renoir is a master of human psychology. There are many little jokes throughout--jokes and ironies that are far beyond what people say and think today. The reaction of a man to the death of a baby, the way sex among unmarried people, even very casual sex, is portrayed as utterly normal. You have the feeling throughout that you are not watching a movie but are watching some lives pass by--it is participatory rather than self-glorifying film-making (see Oliver Stone and even some Spielberg for that) But if you like Britney Spears and think Colin Farrel can act, this isn't for you.

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2 out of 3 people found the following comment useful :-
A good time was had by all.., 12 April 2005

Author: hupalmer from United Kingdom

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.

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One of Renoir's best - social comment that leaves you smiling, 15 May 2007

Author: j-connolly from France

One of Renoir's best - a humanist story of worker cooperation under duress and naturally with a strong social undercurrent. It's strongly narrative following the hopes and dreams of the younger generations, contrasted with the wily and self interested actions of some of the older, more experienced characters.

The way the story is told, be beautiful cinematography all sweep you along through perfectly choreographed dramatic tableaux. With the little guy at the centre moving the action along without ever really taking center stage. Masterful.

I can't help comparing it with "It's a Wonderful Life" by Capra, because of the same "good guy versus corrupt company boss" side, and the strong social message in both. They both leave you feeling "Ah that's alright then" with faith in humanity.

So it's one of the happier Renoirs, with his trademark moral undertone.

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excellent in every way, 13 November 2005

Author: planktonrules from Bradenton, Florida

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

This film was a tiny bit predictable, otherwise it would have earned a 10. The story is about a decent but meek French man who writes cowboy stories (though he has never even been to the American West). He has no dream of having them published but feels a strong need to put his fantasies on paper. This is sort of a vicarious thrill for him because apart from his stories, his own life is rather dull and he is a failure with the ladies. Eventually, his sleazy boss who owns a magazine discovers his stories and agrees to publish them. Of course, being sleazy, there is a catch and the nice main character is, for a while, being used by this creep. However, where the story goes from there and how it goes there is intriguing and make this a must-see film.

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Publish And Be Damned, 15 March 2005

Author: writers_reign

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Prevert wrote this screenplay for Renoir the same year he wrote Jenny for Marcel Carne and it's interesting to speculate what might have happened in French cinema had Prevert forged a partnership with Renoir instead of Carne. There's a lot here about workers 'rights' a subject that still, 70 years down the line, still preoccupies Robert Guidiguian, but given that Prevert IS Prevert there's also a lot of poetic touches and subtle dialogue. Indeed it is tempting to think that the Batala he wrote for Jules Berry was a rough draft for the real Devil that Berry would play a few years later in Les Visiteurs du Soir. Arguably one of the earliest uses of 'flashback' it is also full of holes - the flashback is related by a laundress who has fled with Amedee Lange to a small inn on the border; realizing that the proprietor and customers have recognized Lange as a man wanted for murder, she offers to tell his (Lange's) story and then let them decide whether or not to turn him in. However roughly half of what she relates is stuff of which she herself had no direct knowledge, conversations to which she was not privy, etc. If we make allowances for this we are left with a fairly engrossing story verging on a morality play of good (Lange) versus evil (Batala) and workers banding together and unlike La Belle Equipe remaining bonded via the glue of Lange's humanity. In many small ways it feels earlier than nineteen thirty six but that is not necessarily a bad thing. Now available in a boxed set of 3 Renoir titles of which La Grande Illusion stands out.

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1 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-
Humanist look at communities in pre-war France - and it's a mystery!, 16 March 2006

Author: roger-212 from United States

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

One of the greatest (almost) lost films I've seen is Jean Renoir's "The Crime of Monsieur Lange." Renoir made it in 1936, prior to the invasion of France by German forces, and just before his two wartime masterpieces "Rules of the Game" and "Grand Illusion," which both have overshadowed it critically and in terms of popularity. But I consider "Lange" to be richer in irony, political bite, and even humanity than its more famous followers.

It relates the story of one Amedee Lange, a pulp writer for a weekly paper, published by the womanizing and ever scheming Batala, played with delicious gregariousness by Jules Berry. Lange writes the continuing western serial "Arizona Jim" for the paper, but his prose suffers the indignity of having advertising blurbs inserted into it to by Berry. When Berry, in an effort to avoid creditors, fakes his own death in a train wreck, Lange and the other workers for the paper rally and take over the publishing themselves, creating a popular and commercial success, continuing "Arizona Jim," sharing in the tasks and rewards, and even staging a (rather stagy and unconvincing) film version of the western for the local cinemas.

Renoir creates a potent political subtext by defining this community - the workers, neighbors, and friends - around a single courtyard. His camera glides through doorways and peers through the windows of apartments and shops to eavesdrop on all the personal and professional intrigues (in a way that at the time was considered outrageously overdone). Lange himself has never been outside Paris, and when people comment on the apparent "authenticity" of his western serial, he constantly corrects them - but to no avail. He is soon taken for the lover of the laundress whom his bed-ridden friend has a crush on, another misunderstanding. Lange's a fake – but he barely suspects as much, as he's too concerned with trying to explain, facilitate his friends, or going along for the ride to ever express much more than a sense that he finds the situation ironic. His misunderstood, almost aggressively passive existence becomes the catalyst and center of this self-forming community, a new populist collective that's practically communist.

When Berry unexpectedly returns (dressed in a priest's outfit he's appropriated), he intends to reap the benefits of the commune's success publishing and filming the serial. Lange realizes Berry's capitalist worldview and intent to dictate over them again threatens the well-being of the community, indeed will destroy it. After a drunken party that night (in which Marcel Lévesque gives a speech, in a way reprising his role as the good-hearted sidekick in Feuillade's 1917's "Les Vampires"!) Lange leaves Berry's office and the camera follows him outside through the windows of the office. With a bravura camera pan of a full 360 degrees to take in all the elements around the central courtyard (considered quite self-indulgent then, but now practically invisible to our jaded eyes) Renoir returns to Berry, who's now lying on the cobblestones bleeding - Lange has stabbed him – off-screen - yet the camera move signifies a profound emotional event has transpired and transformed the community...

Lange was made during the period that the Popular Front was gaining political ground in France, when there was optimism that people could band together and conquer the threat that Hitler was manifesting. Renoir's political themes have always been background texture rather than text – "The Rules of the Game" is considered one of the best anti-war films ever made and yet the topic is never brought up in the film. Even "Grand Illusion," taking place in prisoner-of-war camps, concerns itself primarily with the class-based relations between the Germans and their captured prisoners.

Lange's positioning as the reluctant center and catalyst for the commune, as well as its inadvertent savior (by eventually committing murder, the "crime" of the title), is played in ironic set-ups. Berry is dressed as a priest for his ignoble return. Earlier Berry mentions to a priest on the train he "must be able to get away with anything" and this returning sheep in wolf's clothing is another resonance with how people put up fronts that are misunderstood. The film also manages to address, redolent in its subtext, the vagaries of pop culture, verisimilitude of representation, and personal responsibility. (None of the handful of pregnancies in the picture seem to enjoy the benefit of being in wedlock – it's likely that Berry is responsible for all of them).

My favorite moment occurs at the train station, when Berry is about to flee the office for the first time. He's saying goodbye to one of his smitten secretaries (who doesn't realize what a cad he truly is). Renoir allows Berry a moment of wisdom as he tells her how to capture the sympathies of some passing young man (speaking perhaps from personal knowledge) so she won't be lost, abandoned, once he leaves her - by suggesting she pretend to cry over a departing lover on the station platform. Indeed, as Berry's train leaves, her sobs capture the attention of a passing man, whom she begins to walk with. The shot fades out with the hint of a slight smile on her face as she begins to warm to her new conquest. Amazing.

Truffaut called "Monsieur Lange" Renoir's greatest work. The film was issued by Interama on laserdisc in 1988 (now way out of print of course). It was recently issued on VHS from Kino, now OOP as well, and could use a Criterion-grade upgrade and reissue.

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0 out of 1 people found the following comment useful :-
Not just a crime film (spoilers), 23 February 2006

Author: irritable from United States

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

It is a mistake to view this as a crime movie. The crime aspect is just a symbolic summary of the theme that Renoir developed in this movie.

Essentially, this movie was about unbridled capitalism, personified by Batala, vs. the commutarianism of the publishing house after he "died".

The "new era" at the publishing house was one of unbridled happiness and prosperity. Under Batala, the workers were starving while the boss was stealing and screwing people.

My only disagreement with Renoir was that he spent too little time on the good times after Batala was gone, and too much on how Batala was a criminal. But perhaps he needed this to demonize him as well as he did.

We know where Renoir's sympathies were since the protagonists get away in the end. A symbolic death of unbridled capitalism.

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1 out of 3 people found the following comment useful :-
Not Renoir's greatest achievement, 19 July 2005

Author: The_Void from Beverley Hills, England

Jean Renoir is one of the classic French directors and films like La Grande Illusion and The Human Beast show that. This film, The Crime of Monsieur Lange, is not one of the man's best films; but it's still a more than adequate example of French film-making in the 1930's. Adapted from a story by Jean Castanyer (the same man that wrote the story for Renoir's earlier film 'Boudu Saved from Drowning'), The Crime of Monsieur Lange tells the story of a man and woman that bed down in a hotel for the night. The man is recognised by the patrons as being the same man that killed another man, but before they can turn him in; the woman decides to tell the story of exactly why her man is a murderer and then let the customers decide whether or not he should be convicted. This premise offers an interesting base for a film, as themes of justice and morality can easily be tied in; but this is the film's main problem. While Renoir presents the story behind the murder in an interesting way, we never really get into whether or not the protagonist should be convicted.

The film is left open ended, probably so that the audience can 'make their own minds up' about the events; but this idea is never really explored and it's a shame because it could have presented a very interesting backbone for the movie. Quite what Renoir's intentions were for this film, therefore, are rather quite muddled. The film is never exciting enough to be considered a straight thriller, the story isn't deep enough for it to be a deep and complex drama, and we're not presented with enough themes for it to be viewed as a cross section of justice and morality. Jean Renoir seems to have been too much of a complex man to have simply intended this film as a quick Saturday-morning style drama, and themes of living in France at the time aside, that's pretty much what this is. The actual drama in the film is good, however, with the actors giving life to their characters through realistic acting. Renoir's direction is as assured and as vivacious as ever, and you really get the impression with this man that he really puts his back into making films. This certainly isn't a bad movie; but it's not great either. Most people, like me, would probably expect a little more from Renoir...but it's still worth seeing.

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