THE LOWER DEPTHS Movie Review

Les Bas Fonds
Underground

Renoir's adaptation of Maxim Gorky's play is set in no specific land, and yet it's a universal location; this is the bottom rung of the human ladder, a cramped world of derelicts, thieves, and gamblers, scrambling over each other for the meager crumbs they find. Renoir assembled a fine cast, including Jean Gabin as the thief and Louis Jouvet as the baron whose gambling has brought him low, but though the film is beautifully acted, it never finds an adequate rhythm to hold our attention throughout. Wonderful in spots and certainly containing Renoir's spirit of humane generosity. The Lower Depths is nevertheless one of the great director's rare missteps. (Gorky's story had an appeal that the world's best directors found irresistible—The Lower Depths would be filmed again 20 years later, this time by Akira Kurosawa.)

NEXT STOP … The Lower Depths (1957), Dodes ka-den, The Iceman Cometh

1936 92m/B FR Jean Gabin, Louis Jouvet, Vladimir Sokoloff, Robert Le Vigan, Suzy Prim; D: Jean Renoir; W: Jean Renoir, Charles Spaak; C: Jean Bachelet; M: Jean Wiener. VHS FCT, DVT, GW