The Crime of Monsieur Lange Reviews

To be honest, I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this flick but since it seemed to have a decent reputation and since it was available on Netflix, I thought I might as well check it out. Well, it turned out to be a decent watch, even if it was definitely a minor effort from Jean Renoir. The fact that I saw again very recently 'Le jour se lève' and that both movies were terribly similar probably didn’t help. While watching the damned thing, I was sure Renoir tried to copycat Carné's classic but, in fact, it was released a few years before so I was unfair and it might have been actually the other way around. The fact remains that this movie did lack an interesting lead character though. In fact, I don't think there was a lead character at all but, instead many, probably too many, minor characters involved. Eventually, Amédée Lange, the title character, was maybe sweet and innocent but he was also rather spineless, at least, until the last act, and seriously gullible. The fact that René Lefèvre and Florelle didn't have much chemistry probably didn’t help. Eventually, even though the characters individually were not really interesting, as a group, they were actually quite fascinating and Renoir did manage to create here a convincing microcosm, some kind of time capsule which captured the blue collar people in France back in the 30's. I also did appreciate the Communist vibe when Batala was gone and his employees took over the company as a cooperative organization with some much better results than while Batala was running things. Sure, it probably seemed to be too idyllic, too good to be true, but it was a nice fantasy. Anyway, to conclude, even it won't belong among Renoir's masterpieces, it was still pretty good and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you like the genre.

(OK) The spirit of a new society, the cooperativism of artistry, makes his own comic world, disrupted by evil Jules Berry posing as a priest..