Le Crime de M. Lange

I have seen only one film I enjoyed as much as Jean Renoir's Le Crime de M. Lange, and that was Jean Renoir's Rules of the Game, Renoir, at his best, directs with a masterful command of camera, acting, plot, dialogue, in short, all the cinematic virtues. At his worst, he may produce a Picnic on the Grass, but this rather insipid fete champetre should not keep anyone from seeing such a complex and powerful masterpiece as Le Crime.

Although Jacques Prevert's script unfolds the details of a murder, it is very unlike a conventional whodunit. The title of the film assigns guilt, the crime itself does not occur until very near the end, and Lange confesses to the first man he sees. Renoir spends the bulk of his time painting a genre scene of one small area in the Paris printing district. Life flows hectically between the publishing house of Batala and the streets. Renoir's photography seems to tear away the facades of buildings and to make the entire fauborg one stage. A fine example of this technique is the murder scene. The camera, apparently placed in an upper story window across the street, follows Lange from the moment he sees Batala attempting to seduce Florelle (Lange's mistress). Looking through a second floor window, Lange realizes Florelle's danger. It is late at night, and the camera traces Lange's progress through the office and down into the street. His deliberate movements can be seen through the windows that front the staircase and the second floor. At the same time, Batala and Florelle still remain in sight at the bottom of the screen.

As a screen dramatist, Renoir has few equals. He builds up the character of Batala, the malevolent publisher, through a series of short scenes in his private office. Salesmen, creditors and laundresses come in and out on various errands. Batala mulcts the men and seduces the women again and again with a kind of oily facility that amuses at first but disgusts in the end. The laundresses really began to bother me about the third time around. Day after day (which amounts to every ten minutes in the film) they bring him his shirts. The implication is that he changes his linen in front of them after he finishes working up a sweat bending them to his will. All this leaves you wanting to take a bath.

Though Renoir avoids the usual murder mystery pattern, he manages to create quite a shock when he brings back Batala from the dead. I won't give away the crucial sequence, but it would be very simple to figure the whole thing out if Renoir did not use a love scene to draw attention away from a radio broadcast.

After Batala's first "death" his employees form a cooperative to run the press and publish Lange's magnum opus, Arizona Jim. The faubourg rejoices. Renoir illustrates the new freedom by continuing the visual symbolism of the street-building flux. Lange's invalid brother is living in a room whose windows are blocked by one of Batala's billboards. The new regime tears down the poster and Lange's brother looks out onto the street for the first time.

The only fault I find with Le Crime is Jean Wiener's music. Periodically, gypsy violins accompany a street quarrel or an earthy seduction, which is like covering a turnip with strudel dough.

But a quibble, for Le Crime de M. Lange rises easily above its background music. The Telepix shows it for the first time in this country, and it would be a felony to miss it.