Le Crime de Monsieur Lange

 

[I’m using the original – French – title of this film not because I’m being pretentious but because it contains a pun - “l’ange” – angel – that is lost in the translated The Crime of Mr. Lange.]

The salvation and preservation of films, which was a foreign concept until the 1930s, can sometimes be miraculous. Too many great films are officially designated as “lost”. Some of them are lost intentionally, but most of them are consigned to oblivion by mistake or by some unforeseen accident, such as a fire. 

In the credits of the copy of Le Crime de Monsieur Lange that I have, the first words that appear are “Une restauration.” Released in 1936, in a France far different from the France of a decade later, led by governments with similar objectives, but with vastly different motives, Lange is a rapturous snapshot of a fleeting moment in French history when the working class was in the driver’s seat. 

As far as I’ve been able to discover, Lange wasn’t exported at the time of its initial release. It was successful in France, but perhaps because it was inspired by the political atmosphere of a moment in time that was doomed not to last, it was given an unearned “niche” status and enjoyed no posterity. The lamentedly late John Simon saw it in New York 1964 at the now legendary 57th Street Normandie Theater. Despite its obscurity, Simon was evidently delighted by its reappearance:

Le Crime de Monsieur Lange is a film that is absolutely fine. It is a poetic parable written by that most marvelous of minor poets, Jacques Prévert. It is a completely touching, lyrically simple plea against simplicity, decency, and socialism. And true love. Every word and gesture in it is a balm for all the crimes against mankind. It makes you weep and laugh and proud to be alive. 

Aside from this obscure screening, the film was otherwise never released in the U.S. until the restored version was shown at the 55th New York Film Festival in 2017, to the general surprise and delight of critics, none of whom had seen it before. Just why it had to wait so long, more than 80 years, for everyone to be entranced by it is another of the bizarre miracles of world cinema distribution. 

The basic plot of the film’s story was laid down by Renoir and Jean Castanier (spelled Castanyer in the credits), who also served as the film’s designer. A local gendarme reads a news bulletin at the bar of the Café Hotel de la Frontiere about a man, Amédée Lange, wanted for a murder in Paris. A car races to the front of the hotel where the driver, Meunier, has brought Lange and his lover, Valentine. Meunier tells them the food is good and just over the hills is the frontier with Belgium, to which they intend to escape when night falls. They ask for a room and a maid shows them there. Immediately, the men in the cafe begin to speculate about the strangers’ identity and wonder what they will do about him. Valentine enters the cafe and sits down. She tells them that the man she is with is indeed the wanted man, but she asks for their patience as she tells them his story. The rest of the film is an extended flashback. The film closes with Lange and Valentine walking away from the camera across a windy beach toward safety. 

Jacques Prevert’s work as a film script writer is mostly restricted to one director, Marcel Carne. The films Le Quai des Brumes, Le Jour se Leve, and especially the magnificent Les Enfants du Paradis are works that shed what I consider to be undeserved light on Carne, whose best work without Prevert isn’t at all up to the same standard.

When Prevert wrote the script for one film by Jean Renoir, a much finer filmmaker at his best, the result was predictably beautiful, and one of Renoir’s best films. Everything about Lange is infused with an enthusiasm whose source has been overtaken by history. The Popular Front in France had been a direct response to the events in Spain, from the optimism of the early months of the Republic to the rise of fascism that would eventually crush it. Hence, Le Crime de Monsieur Lange has a romantic aspect, unaffected by subsequent events. After the war, the French blamed the doomed Third Republic for the fall of France and the Occupation. They were demoralised, they said. But the French learned a different lesson from WWI - about the absolute folly of war.

Renoir’s actors are all so concentratedly within their roles in every scene of Lange. I will single out three: Sylvia Bataille’s Edith, hopelessly in love with Batala, the look on her face when she sees him off at the train station knowing it’s the last she will see of him; Nadia Sibirskaïa’s Estelle, in love with Charlie, an acrobat, but impregnated by Batala, she tells Charlie who the father is and he forgives her so simply and so beautifully; and the concierge, played by Marcel Lèvesque, who always sings a maudlin Christmas song when he’s drunk, and who screams “A PRIEST!” repeatedly – hilariously – as Batala, dressed as a priest, dies in the courtyard. 

Jules Berry is marvelous as Batala – irresistible to women, who know what a scoundrel he is; he is loathsome and unstoppable, but extremely charming. Like Valentin in Le Jour se leve (another Prevert script), his villainy is all the more deplorable because he is so convincingly human.

My life-long experience of Jean Renoir’s films started, I think, with The Rules of the Game, a film that gives me something new every time I see it.  Grand Illusion was probably next, and within another decade, Boudu Saved from Drowning, A Day in the Country, Toni, The Human Beast, Picnic on the Grass and The Elusive Corporal. Although I longed to see Le Crime de Monsieur Lange, in all this time – 45 years – I only managed to find it this past month. Now that I’ve finally seen it, I’m glad that the wait was so long. It has reawakened my love of cinema in these uncertain times.