LE CRIME DE MONSIEUR LANGE (1936) *** Jean Renoir doesn't make you dig deep for big metaphors: business is allowed to rape the workers and society doesn't work properly or flow in a healthy manner for two reasons: (1) the legal system, and (2) business masquerading as religion. It's interesting to wonder in what senses he understood the depth and rich texture of the particularly prophetic second. And they said that communism was a religion substitute. Nostradamus didn't nail anything with such clarity. Renoir is sensual, concerned with human feelings...not at the expense of everything else, but more because nothing else matters nearly as much. Nadia Sibirskala is nearly the perfect actress for him, with her eyes and curls she could have been lifted from a canvass of Renoir's father. The Front Populaire receives more than a nod as Rene Lefevre announces "a new formula" of realism and guns down a metaphysical abhorrent in a stolen priest suit. They don't make movies like this anymore, for reasons that Renoir highlights brilliantly and regularly throughout the film. The old soldier doesn't like the co-operative, until it pays his hospital bill. Anything with enough money to pay a hospital bill is going to attract moral reprehensibles, acting under protection of the law. Where do the residuals for Front Populaire films go?
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