THE CRIME OF MONSIEUR LANGE Movie Review

Le Crime de Monsieur Lange

One of the earliest screenplays on which surrealist Jacques Prévert collaborated was this charmingly witty and easily digested bit of anti-capitalist entertainment from Jean Renoir. A deeply pleasurable fantasy of what socialism might be if it could ever actually be made to work. The Crime of Monsieur Lange is set at a publishing house run by the slimy and oppressive profiteer, Batala (Jules Berry). Monsieur Lange (René Lefèvre) is a humble employee who loves good literature as well as pulp fiction, and in his spare time is writing a rip-roaring western adventure with the wonderful title (especially when pronounced in French) of Arizona Jim. When Batala appropriates the book as a picture-book for quick cash, he also fills it with gratuitous commercial mentions of a patent medicine—perhaps one of the cinema's first references to the still-obnoxious practice of product placement. This isn't enough to take care of the unscrupulous boss's debts, however, and when he takes it on the lam, his employees band together to create a harmonious collective where there was once a grim sweatshop. Batala's eventual return drives Lange to the satisfying crime of the title, which is recounted in relaxed and richly textured flashback form by the incomparable Renoir. Created in the wake of the formation of France's left-wing Popular Front, Monsieur Lange served as a rallying point for audiences who wanted this publishing collective to be more than just a fantasy. Despite the Popular Front's victories later that year (1936), their dreamed-of goals quickly proved elusive. Renoir's elegant and enchanting film, however, has yet to lose any of its luster.

NEXT STOP … Boudu Saved from Drowning, La Chinoise, Our Daily Bread

1936 90m/B FR Rene Lefevre, Jules Berry, Florelle, Sylvia Bataille, Jean Daste, Nadia Sibirskaia, Henri Guisol; D: Jean Renoir; W: Jean Renoir, Jacques Prevert; C: Jean Bachelet; M: Jean Wiener, Joseph Kosma. VHS FCT, INT