''The Crime of Monsieur Lange'' (; French: ''Le Crime de Monsieur Lange'') is a 1936 film directed by

Jean Renoir Jean Renoir (; 15 September 1894 – 12 February 1979) was a French film director, screenwriter, actor, producer and author. As a film director and actor, he made more than forty films from the silent film, silent era to the end of the 1960s. ...

about a publishing cooperative. Imbued with the spirit of the communist/socialist

Popular Front A popular front is "any coalition of working-class and middle-class parties", including liberal and social democratic ones, "united for the defense of democratic forms" against "a presumed Fascist assault". More generally, it is "a coalition ...

, which would score a major political victory in 1936, the film is an idyllic picture of a

socialist Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the e ...

France and is both a social commentary and a romance.

Plot

M. Lange is a mild-mannered writer of Western stories for a publishing company. Batala, the salacious owner of the company, flees his creditors. When his train crashes, he takes the opportunity to fake his own death. The abandoned workers, with the help of an eccentric creditor, form a cooperative. They have great success with Lange's stories about the cowboy, Arizona Jim, whose stories parallel the real-life experiences of the cooperative. At the same time, Lange and his neighbor Valentine, an old flame of Batala's, fall in love. When Batala resurfaces, intending to reclaim the publishing company, Lange shoots and kills him to protect the cooperative. Lange and Valentine flee the country, stopping at an inn near the Belgian frontier where Valentine tells Lange's story to a group of the inn's patrons who had recognized Lange as the murderer on the run and threatened to alert the police. After hearing the story, the men sympathize with Lange and Valentine and allow them to escape across the border to freedom.

Cast

* René Lefèvre — Amédée Lange *

Florelle Florelle (born Odette Élisa Joséphine Marguerite Rousseau, 9 August 1898 – 28 September 1974) was a French soprano singer and actress. She gained fame as Polly Peachum in the French film ''The Threepenny Opera'', after which she had numero ...

— Valentine Cardès *

Jules Berry Jules Berry (born Marie Louis Jules Paufichet; 9 February 1883 – 23 April 1951) was a French actor. Biography Early life Berry and his two brothers were born to parents who sold hardware and settled in Poitou. The family moved to Paris in 188 ...

— Paul Batala *

Marcel Lévesque Marcel Lévesque (6 December 1877 – 16 February 1962) was a French film actor. Born Joseph Marcel Lévesque in Paris, he died in Couilly-Pont-aux-Dames. Selected filmography * ''Les Vampires'' (1915) * ''Judex'' (1916) * ''La dama de Chez Ma ...

— The concierge *Odette Talazac — The concierge's wife *

Sylvia Bataille Sylvia Bataille (born Sylvia Maklès; 1 November 1908 – 22 December 1993) was a French actress of Romanian-Jewish descent. When she was twenty, she married the writer Georges Bataille with whom she had a daughter, the psychoanalyst Laurence Bata ...

— Edith *

Nadia Sibirskaïa Nadia Sibirskaïa (born Germaine Marie Josèphe Lebas, 11 September 1901 – 14 July 1980) was a French film actress.Sultanik p.263 She was married to the Russian-born director Dimitri Kirsanoff and appeared in several of his early films. Filmogr ...

— Estelle *Henri Guisol — The son Meunier *Maurice Baquet — Charles, the concierges' son *

Jacques B. Brunius __NOTOC__ Jacques B. Brunius (born Jacques Henri Cottance, 16 September 1906 – 24 April 1967) was a French actor, director and writer, who was born in Paris and died in Exeter, UK. He was cremated in Sidmouth, with a tribute by Mesens. Assistan ...

(as J.B. Brunius) — Mr. Baigneur *Sylvain Itkine — Inspector Juliani, Batala's cousin *

Marcel Duhamel Marcel Duhamel (16 July 1900 in Paris – 6 March 1977 in Saint-Laurent-du-Var) was a French actor and screenwriter, founder of the Série noire publishing imprint. He played The Foreman in Jean Renoir's 1936 ''The Crime of Monsieur Lange''. In ...

— Louis, the foreman *

René Génin René Génin (25 January 1890 – 24 October 1967) was a French stage and film actor. He appeared in more than 130 films between 1931 and 1965. Selected filmography * ''The Brighton Twins'' (1936) * ''27 Rue de la Paix'' (1936) * ''Nights ...

(as Génin) — A client at the Auberge Inn *

Max Morise Max Morise (5 April 1900 – 29 October 1973) was a French artist, writer and actor, associated with the Surrealist movement in Paris from 1924 to 1929. He was friends with Robert Desnos and Roger Vitrac before they joined the Surrealist movement. ...

— Man with the pipe *

Jean Dasté Jean Dasté, born Jean Georges Gustave Dasté, (18 September 1904 in Paris, France – 15 October 1994 in Saint-Priest-en-Jarez, Loire, France)Paul Demange —Creditor

Production

Renoir considered the film a collaboration with the

agitprop Agitprop (; from rus, агитпроп, r=agitpróp, portmanteau of ''agitatsiya'', "agitation" and ''propaganda'', "propaganda") refers to an intentional, vigorous promulgation of ideas. The term originated in Soviet Russia where it referred to ...

theatre company the October Group. It was based on an original idea by Renoir and Jean Castanier titled ''Sur la cour'' (french: Sur la cour, lit=on the courtyard). Poet and screenwriter

Jacques Prévert Jacques Prévert (; 4 February 1900 – 11 April 1977) was a French poet and screenwriter. His poems became and remain popular in the French-speaking world, particularly in schools. His best-regarded films formed part of the poetic realist moveme ...

wrote the script. The shooting lasted 25 days from October to November 1935 and took place at

Le Tréport Le Tréport () is a commune in the Seine-Maritime department in Normandy, France. Geography A small fishing port and light industrial town situated in the Pays de Caux, some northeast of Dieppe at the junction of the D 940, the D 78 and th ...

and in the Paris studios of Billancourt. It was during the shooting of the film that

Paul Éluard Paul Éluard (), born Eugène Émile Paul Grindel (; 14 December 1895 – 18 November 1952), was a French poet and one of the founders of the Surrealist movement. In 1916, he chose the name Paul Éluard, a matronymic borrowed from his maternal ...

introduced

Pablo Picasso Pablo Ruiz Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and Scenic design, theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the most influential artists of the 20th ce ...

Dora Maar Henriette Theodora Markovitch (22 November 1907 – 16 July 1997), known as Dora Maar, was a French photographer, painter, and poet. A romantic partner of Pablo Picasso, Maar was depicted in a number of Picasso's paintings, including his ''Portr ...

, who served as set photographer for the production.

Legacy

In his autobiography, Renoir claimed that the great success of ''The Crime of Monsieur Lange'' in France caused him to become strongly associated with the extreme political left wing. French communists asked him to produce overt propaganda films denouncing

fascism Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, ultra-nationalist political ideology and movement,: "extreme militaristic nationalism, contempt for electoral democracy and political and cultural liberalism, a belief in natural social hierarchy an ...

, and he readily complied with the communists' demands, stating: "I believed that every honest man owed it to himself to resist

Nazism Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Na ...

. I am a filmmaker, and this is the only way in which I could play a part in the battle." Renoir's left-wing propaganda films of the mid-1930s, including ''The Crime of Monsieur Lange'', along with his writings for various newspapers, placed him in danger when France entered World War II. Renoir's American friends, particularly the filmmaker

Robert Flaherty Robert Joseph Flaherty, (; February 16, 1884 – July 23, 1951) was an American filmmaker who directed and produced the first commercially successful feature-length documentary film, ''Nanook of the North'' (1922). The film made his reputatio ...

, urged him to obtain a visa from the American consulate in

Nice Nice ( , ; Niçard: , classical norm, or , nonstandard, ; it, Nizza ; lij, Nissa; grc, Νίκαια; la, Nicaea) is the prefecture of the Alpes-Maritimes department in France. The Nice agglomeration extends far beyond the administrative c ...

so that he may flee to the United States. He decided to do so after he claimed that Nazis had requested that he make films sympathetic to their cause. Roger Leenhardt of ''Espirit'' called the film "all the more remarkable in that the work owes its witty style to the harmony of… two unshakably original temperaments… Prévert contributed his vivacity and mordant humor, and Renoir the resonance of his true romanticism." Peter Harcourt said that it was "in a sense the most intelligent film… Renoir ever made."

François Truffaut François Roland Truffaut ( , ; ; 6 February 1932 – 21 October 1984) was a French film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film critic. He is widely regarded as one of the founders of the French New Wave. After a career of more tha ...

wrote that "''Mr. Lange'' is of all Renoir's films, the most spontaneous, the most dense set of miracles and camera, the busiest of truth and pure beauty, a film we would say touched by grace."

References

Sources

Renoir, Jean. ''My Life and My Films'', New York: Da Capo Press, 2000.

External links

*
''The Crime of Monsieur Lange''
on

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Crime of Monsieur Lange, The 1936 films 1936 crime drama films French satirical films Films directed by Jean Renoir French black-and-white films 1930s French-language films Films with screenplays by Jacques Prévert French crime drama films Films scored by Joseph Kosma 1930s French films