The Crime of Monsieur Lange

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The Crime of Monsieur Lange
Warner Brothers
Release date
  • 24 January 1936 (1936-01-24)
Running time
80 minutes
CountryFrance
LanguageFrench

The Crime of Monsieur Lange (

Warner Brothers.[1]

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

Production

Renoir considered the film a collaboration with the agitprop 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 wrote the script.[2] The shooting lasted 25 days[3] from October to November 1935 and took place at Le Tréport and in the Paris studios of Billancourt.[citation needed] It was during the shooting of the film that Paul Éluard introduced Pablo Picasso to Dora Maar, who served as set photographer for the production.[4]

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

Robert Flaherty, urged him to obtain a visa from the American consulate in Nice 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.[6]

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."[7] Peter Harcourt said that it was "in a sense the most intelligent film… Renoir ever made."[8] François Truffaut 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."[9]

See also

References

  1. ^ "Le Crime de Monsieur Lange de Jean Renoir (1935) - Unifrance".
  2. ^ Wakeman, John. World Film Directors, Volume 1. The H. W. Wilson Company. 1987, p. 929.
  3. ^ Renoir. p. 200.
  4. ISBN 978-2-87811-185-9
    ).
  5. ^ Renoir, p. 125.
  6. ^ Renoir, p. 182
  7. ^ Wakeman. p. 929.
  8. ^ Wakeman. p. 930.
  9. ISBN 978-2-85199-528-5
    . Retrieved 25 February 2022.

Sources

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

ISBN 978-0306804571
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